The Shepherd
by Sevinne
Summary: After her brother's death, Will seeks vengeance on the pack of criminals who killed him. A story of plotted revenge that turns out the most unlikely of consequences. May be re-rated M later on.
1. Prologue

_Welcome to my first fic! Since this is only the prologue, I'm not going to ramble on with a big introduction. (We'll take care of that in the first chapter :D)_

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**Prologue**

"_The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. _

_He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;_

_He leadeth me beside the still waters._

_He restoreth my soul;_

_He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake._

_Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,_

_I will fear no evil, for thou art with me,_

_Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me._

_Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;_

_Thou anointest my head with oil;_

_My cup runneth over._

_Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,_

_And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."_

When they buried my brother Terrence, they may as well have buried my father. That was the day that he started drowning, carrying the bottle around with him like some sort of wicked talisman. Whatever evil it was supposed to ward off, though, had already gotten him; he just didn't know it.

I watched him deteriorate inside of the alcohol and grief. I watched him go from a respectable doctor to a wreck of a man whom nobody trusted with their broken bones to something that was not a man at all. By that point I had to start dragging him home after work and laying him into bed, taking off his shoes and wiping the sweat off of his face. After a while he stopped getting out of a bed at all, which made some things easier and other things harder. I didn't have to bear his weight all the way across town anymore, but he couldn't pay for the house when he wasn't making any money. I was barely seventeen and without a husband, so I could hardly save myself from going down with the sinking ship. It fell to me to take care of Matthew Slater, the man who'd served in the war and beat darkness off the front porch with a broom. His wife died giving birth to me, and he raised Terry and I by himself. Somehow, the death of his son got him where the death of my mother didn't. He never married again, but he never started the slow process or drinking himself to death, either.

Terrence was shot down in the middle of the Arizona desert. I imagine it was a dirty, disgusting way to die, amongst the dust and the sweltering heat, but that's only in the times that I dare imagine it, and that's not often. I usually push any actual thoughts of his death from my mind and replace them with my newfound need for vengeance.

Some people -- no, a lot of people -- blamed Terry for his own death. They waited a few months after the funeral to voice their real opinions, but they voiced them all the same. They said that if Terry hadn't gotten involved, he'd still be with us. If that were true, I'd sit here and wish that he'd kept his nose in his own business, but somehow I don't think that it would have made a difference. My brother was always plagued with the problem of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This time, he happened to be within earshot of a robbery. And, just his luck, it was Ben Wade and company doing the robbing. If there ever was a man without a trace of a conscience in his head, it was Ben Wade.

My brother took the same path from his house every time he came to visit us. When they found him, his horse was still on the path, but he wasn't. The way the authorities figured it, Terry heard guns and went over to investigate. I suppose the theory is that he got a little too close, because he was shot in the throat. He bled to death after a few minutes. I used to wonder what he thought about during those final moments, looking up at the endless blue sky. Maybe he thought about Miranda, his wife, and the baby that they had on the way. Maybe he thought about me -- I'll never know. I'd give anything to be able to ask him.

After we got the first rent notice, I decided it was time to take a job. Why I chose the one I did is still beyond me. I knew perhaps better than anyone what kind of person alcohol turns a man into, so getting myself hired as a barmaid wasn't an action that allowed for any relief of home life stress. I learned soon enough, though, that there were some perks to serving beer to the empty shells that warmed the barstool vinyl. Not only did they tip well, but they talked well, too. I saw a great many criminals come through the doors and drink their sorrows away, and when they had enough drinks in their system, they'd talk to me. That's how I got it into my head to go after Ben Wade. I figured that he'd come back someday, and I'd hear one of his plans and get him arrested before he knew what'd hit him. Men are far too trusting of pretty girls with their hair tied back. They don't know that we do it only to hear their secrets better.


	2. Chapter 1: Morning

_Alright, let's take care of the necessaries..._

_I do not own any character from the movie _3:10 to Yuma, _remake, original, or otherwise. Any characters (such as Will, Jocelyn, Matthew, and Tommy) that you don't see in the movie are mine and I'd appreciate your asking permission before using them._

_As you know, this is a romance fic. It's currently rated T, but that might change, depending on how I'm feeling. If the story suddenly disappears, it's probably because I've upped the rating. Like I said, we'll see. _

_Please don't be shy, I want lots of reviews. Thanks for reading!_

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**Chapter One: Morning**

The sun never rose before the town did; it was always dismayed to find that it was late in waking. Farmers crawled out of bed at the cock's crow and their women came after them, and within the reaches of the town's more congested buildings, some people never went to sleep at all. One of these people was Matthew Slater, seventeen year widower and the recent recipient of a rather unfortunate loss. Terrence Slater's murder had shaken the entire town, and had shaken his father enough that there was no bouncing back. He could spare his daughter, but he couldn't spare his son.

Wilhelmina had taken her father's descent into depression rather well, all things considered. She had kept him composed during Terry's funeral and even had him going to work for a few weeks afterwards. Of course no one blamed her when Mr. Slater took his early and dishonourable retirement -- she had handled the awkward situation very gracefully, taking a respectable job as a barmaid with the not-so-respectable Jocelyn James, who crossed her legs at the thigh when sitting and draped her dress sleeves off her shoulders. Wilhelmina, however -- in spite of her insistence that everyone call her "Will", which was, quite frankly, a boy's name -- seemed to have maintained some sense of propriety, even in the presence of the promiscuous Miss James. She showed up for work every day, on time, and took shorter lunch breaks than any of the other women she worked with. When she was finished at the end of the day, she went home to take care of her father.

While the self professed "Will" made it clear that she had no time for courting, the people of the town (particularly the women) were convinced that she'd be married in no time. She had, after all, inherited her mother's good looks. She was tall and had a decent amount of meat on her bones, enough to fill out her dresses and turn heads when she waited tables. She had her mother's same brown curls and forest green eyes, the same innocent, childlike look to her face. It was unfortunate that her brother had died just when the men started to notice how much she'd come into herself; they were intimidated by the new quietness that came over her after Terry was gone. From what the town saw, the two of them had been close. Terry had taught her how to ride a horse and shoot a gun, and on the latter he had taught her exceptionally well. If she weren't a girl, Will would easily have been named the deadest shot in town.

It was also her femininity that prevented her from doing what, it was rumoured, she wanted to do since her father slipped into his physical stupor. There had always been talk of Will petitioning the mayor to allow her a temporary position as doctor, at least until her father regained his previous good health. It was common knowledge that a new doctor had yet to be found, so obviously Will's attempts to break into the position had been unsuccessful, if she'd made them at all. It was so difficult to separate the truth from the lies when it came to the talk that accompanied women who walked together on the streets or passed each other in the market; some things were said purely for the sake of viciousness. Though who would harbour any viciousness towards Will was a near impossible question to answer.

For the most part, in spite of the elderly women's mild disapproval of her, Will was left alone. She'd gotten this far without a helping hand, so no one saw any point in offering one now.

Will woke at the crack of dawn. Her body had trained itself to awaken when the sun came peeking over the horizon to the point that she no longer found it difficult to open her eyes and dress in the weak light. She was awake at this time even on the days when she didn't work, simply because the routine had become etched into her mind.

She had never been the type of girl who worried too much about how her clothes looked; most trends, like the corsets Jocelyn wrestled herself into, required an extra pair of hands to help get on. Will had grown up without a female presence in the house and had been thusly denied the simple pleasure of restricting her air supply with a stretch of fabric and ivory. Somehow she had managed not to care.

She tied her brown hair back, loosely so she wouldn't get a headache as the day wore on. She could tell from the way the air shuddered on the other side of her window that the heat was going to be absolutely hellish once the sun had risen fully, and she'd be stuck inside the bar where the air pressed in with no notion of personal space.

It was already too close to light a fire in the stove, so her father would have another cold breakfast today. Will knew he wouldn't mind; most lunch hours she came home to find his bread and jam untouched on the rickety table beside his bed, and him lying in the tangled sheets with a near-empty bottle resting against his belly. Some days he was asleep; other days he had his head tilted back and was pouring a steady stream of amber fluid in between his cracked lips. On these days he did not eat lunch and did not recognize his daughter.

"Morning, darlin'," he mumbled now as she came in with his plate of food. "You're looking just as pretty as ever."

"Thanks, Daddy," she said, and kissed his withered cheek.

"Sit down, sweetheart, lemme look at you."

She sat on the edge of the bed and the rusty springs yawned beneath her. Her father's rough hand brushed her face gently, his brown eyes nostalgic.

"You're just like your mother," he said softly. "Have I ever told you that?"

"This would be the millionth time, I think," she said, and laughed. He smiled as she got up and set his breakfast on the table. She paused for a moment before picking up the empty bottle that occupied the space beside a black and white picture of Terry on his first horse, his dark hair flopped in his face and his teeth exposed in a wide grin.

"He was so happy about that damned horse," said Mr. Slater gruffly, following Will's gaze. "Fell down and got right back up again. Never seen 'im laugh so hard."

He sighed and took a drink out of the bottle he'd slept with.

"Daddy, will you try to eat today?" Will asked timidly. He was always volatile when Terry's name came up. "For me, will you try?"

He turned his head on the pillow and stared out the window at the ramshackle barn, empty of Terry's favourite horses. The only one that'd stayed was Will's Sam, the trusty old steed that took her to the bar every morning. She'd be able to hear him soon, crying for his share of attention.

She crept away from her father's bed and hesitated in the doorway, wishing there were something more she could do.

"I love you, Daddy," she whispered, and got no reply. She closed the door quietly on his blank face.

* * *

"Arthur asked me to marry him this morning," said Jocelyn, playing with the ring on her finger.

Will, elbow deep in a tub of soapy water, raised her eyebrows.

"Did he now?" she said, unsurprised. Arthur had been smitten with Jocelyn even before she'd bedded him. "What'd you say?"

"I told him I'd need some time to consider," she replied. "He gave me the ring anyways, said it was mine even if I said no. Awfully sweet of him."

"He's a sweet boy," said Will, sounding too much like a mother even though Jocelyn was three years her senior. She felt around the bottom of the tub for the dishes she'd missed. She always missed something.

"That's what's getting me, I think -- maybe he's _too_ sweet."

"Is there such a thing?"

Jocelyn shrugged. "I dunno. I mean, he's fine with unmarried sex, he's good with kids, he holds the door and tells folks off for talking funny about me. But I dunno about marrying him. What if he's just going through a kindly phrase what wears off once I say I do? And think if he's not the one. Then the real one comes along and finds me unavailable -- don't laugh, it's very serious! What if the real love of my life comes along and finds me with Arthur and I spend the rest of my life pining for another man? That hardly seems fair to either of us."

Will smiled to herself but managed to keep a serious tone. "So what're you gonna do?"

"Gosh, Will, I dunno. What would you do in my shoes?"

"I can't fit into your shoes, Josie," said Will, taking the dish tub up into her strong arms. "Everyone knows that."

"But say you could," Jocelyn whined, following her as she took the dish tub out the back door. "What would you do, if my shoes were yours?"

Will dumped the dirty water out onto the cracked earth with a heavy whoosh. Two knives tumbled out and hit the ground, the ones she'd missed. She muttered a curse as he picked them up, wiping off on her apron. You could hardly tell.

"If my shoes were yours," she said, inspecting the knives, "I'd tell my Arthur to talk to my Daddy first. There's no way your father will let you run off and marry a blacksmith's son who lacks brains like a toad lacks hair. Then you have your excuse not to marry him."

"And if I decide later that I do want to marry him?"

"Then you do the romantic thing and run away together. If he says yes to that, he's a keeper."

Jocelyn grinned. "He'll love that."

"I'll bet. But really, if any man asked me -- really me, not me in your shoes -- to marry him just now, I'd say flat out no. I haven't got time for a husband.

"You'd best not let Mrs. Garrloom get wind of that," said Jocelyn darkly. "She'll be figuring you for some kind of loon."

"Mrs. Garrloom couldn't find her own ass with both hands and a map," replied Will, and Jocelyn giggled.

"But say you meet the right man," she crooned, "and you fall in _love_..."

"And we get married and he starts telling me that I need to stay around the house because the world is no place for a woman," said Will, drying out the dregs of water in the bottom of the dish tub with a grubby yellow towel. "And gradually I stop riding horses and coming to the bar and I forget how to speak my mind or shoot a gun, and then we have a whole whack of babies and I'm chained to them anyways so all the other things that came before _legal matrimony_ stop mattering. No thank you."

"Jesus, Will, I'm thinking about getting married!"

"Sorry," said Will dispassionately. "But anyways, Arthur's a good man, the only good man who's ever proposed to you. He wouldn't cage you up like some shameful thing what ought to be hidden."

"What makes you think you'd marry someone like that?" Jocelyn asked curiously.

"I have poor judgement."

"Come on now, you do alright."

"I manage. But I'm sure it wouldn't take a whole lot of cunning for some fiend to sweep me off my feet. Then I'd be royally -- "

"Customer!" Jocelyn hissed through a painful looking smile. Will looked up from the dish tub and had to squint to make out the face of the figure who had stepped inside to avoid the brutal sunlight. She sighed.

"That's not a customer," she said, "that's only Tommy."

Thomas Levine took off his hat and held it with his shaking hands, flicking his gaze from Jocelyn to Will nervously. He looked a wreck, just like he always did: bony cheeks and watery eyes, an anxious smile. His wiry presence was unnerving; it was the reason he couldn't get a girl. He popped into the bar every once and a while to talk to the only two girls in town who weren't technically allowed to laugh at him. Not that Will would have anyway -- she felt sorry for him more than anything else, and it wasn't as if he was doing anyone any harm. He kept to himself mostly, escaping his mother's needy cries when he could and trying to avoid being called a ninny.

"Hey sweetheart," said Jocelyn. "What can I do ya for?"

"I'm not b-buying, thanks Josie," said Tommy, taking his usual seat at the deserted bar. "M-my mother would k-kill me if she found me s-spending money on the drink."

"Smart woman, your mother," said Will, smiling. "How's she doing? Don't see her around a lot these days."

"S-she stays inside mostly, takes care of the baby. She d-doesn't much approve of this place." He looked around, laughing shakily. "I think she w-worries about you t-two. She talks about you all the t-time."

"Is that so?" asked Jocelyn, frowning defensively. "What does she say?"

"S-she just talks about the d-dangers of w-women in b-bars," said Tommy as quickly as he could with his stutter, struggling to placate her. "Y-you know how she -- how she is, Josie. M-my mother d-doesn't have any idea what she's t-talking about m-most of the time."

"Now now," said Will, "don't you let Jocelyn James trick you into speaking ill of your mother. Miss James can be a very sneaky one."

"S-sneaky, sure. Jocelyn -- is that a ring on your finger?"

It became immediately clear that Jocelyn had been containing her impatience for him to notice this detail; she squealed and wiggled her fingers under his nose.

"Sure is," she gushed. "Arthur asked me to marry him this morning!"

"The blacksmith's son?"

"The very same. Now, I asked Wilhelmina Slater how she thought I should answer -- " presently she glared at Will, " -- but she's such a cynic, I couldn't make heads or tails of her opinion. You're a nice sensitive boy, Tommy, what do you think I should say?"

Tommy blushed scarlet and became immediately flabbergasted, stumbling over his words. Jocelyn laughed.

"Never mind, it's alright -- I'm sure I'll be able to figure it out. And so what if I do marry him? What's the worst that could happen?"

"We've already been over that scenario," Will reminded her.

"True, but I don't shoot guns or ride horses so I don't figure I'd be missing much." She held her hand out at arm's length and examined the ring in the sunlight. "I've more than half a mind to say yes," she murmured, her eyes taking on a dreamlike quality. "Say what you like, Will, but settling down don't seem half so bad as you put it, at least not from where I'm standing."

Will rolled her eyes for Tommy's benefit and he gave another nervous laugh before he stood.

"You're not leaving already!" Jocelyn cried, tearing her eyes from her hand. "I was just getting used to your company, Tommy Levine!"

"S-sorry, Josie; I really have to g-go. I'll c-come back tomorrow, maybe."

"Hmph," said Will once he was out the door. "Maybe indeed -- I don't think a flood would keep Tommy Levine at home, what with that wretched mother of his. She's probably wringing her hands right now, wondering where her baby boy's gone."

"You really ought to work on your optimism, Will," said Jocelyn matter-of-factly. "Being around you is right depressing."

* * *

Ben Wade knew for a fact that he was being greedy, riding back the way he was, but using his current place in the world for reassurance, he'd decided not to care, and that was that. He was followed in his decision by the ever-faithful, never-questioning Charlie Prince, who was pretty much leading the rest of the team with his gun. The crew were sheep, Charlie was the shepherd, and in the small but grand scheme of things, Ben was God. There was a certain amount of arrogance that came with knowing this of oneself, and Ben held no illusions about it. He was an arrogant man. The true God knew he had earned the right.

He'd been to this town six months ago, this one they were headed to now. He'd stolen a fair amount of money and shot a fair amount of men, stirring up the dust and the bloodlust in the hearts of the townspeople. Normally six months wasn't quite long enough for said dust to settle, but he was Ben Wade, and he planned to walk through it as it still hung in the air. There was a stage coach what ran through the town and out past it, carrying a great deal of money. Caution would be necessary of course; it always was and he never worried. It was a big enough job that he'd have to try something different, transport wads of the cash separately, but it'd work. His trust in the plan was unwavering. It would work.

The sun was high in the sky now, looking down at them disapprovingly. Let it. He'd be finished before noon, and then they'd head into town for a drink.

He loaded his gun and waited.


	3. Chapter 2: Common Knowledge

_Firstly, thank you for the kind reviews and I'm very sorry for neglecting to update. I tend to fall behind with these kinds of things and (well) everything else._

_I just remembered as I was finishing this chapters that there are a few things you should probably know: _

_This is set in Arizona, because I wasn't creative enough to pick a new state, but it's set a solid few years before the movie takes place. I guess you could say it's kind of about how people become the way they are. _

_So that's enough cryptic messaging for now... read read read!_

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**Chapter Two: Common Knowledge**

Will did not hear the gunshots being fired outside of town, and upon future reflection, she would later decide that it wouldn't have mattered either way. There were no precautions she could have taken against her life being turned so completely upside down. It played out in her head over and over again, and it always turned out the same way.

Had she heard the gunshots, Will would have paused as she poured drinks, doing a non-visual double take. She would not, of course, have believed her ears. But when four more shots rang out across the Arizona skyline, she would have known for certain that something was wrong, that trouble was afoot not too far off. She would have put down the bottle of whatever alcohol she happened to be pouring and taken a moment in the back room to collect herself. She would have been startled but unafraid, and certainly not panicky enough to ask Jocelyn to work through her approaching break so she'd have some backup if the afooted trouble arrived. No. When Josie came to the back room to check on her, Will would have said that she was just getting a new keg because the old one was nearly out. Jocelyn would not have cared enough to question and would have gone on her break in fifteen minutes with nothing on her mind but visiting Arthur at his father's shop.

But Will didn't need to lie about the keg or worry about the repercussions of gunshots because she didn't hear them, and when it really came down to it, this changed nothing, because Jocelyn went on her break and Will was left to tend the bar and everything got on as it would have done anyway; it was just all the more surprising when the band of criminals piled in.

Will had never seen an outlaw up close before and therefore had no way of knowing what they were when they walked in, the sunshine attacking her eyes and clouding her vision of their faces. They carried a lot of guns, she noticed, but this was Arizona and everybody carried guns; she herself kept a pistol under the counter to protect herself during her shifts. The real fishy thing was the way they walked, the confident swaggers that seemed at the same time to be a conscious effort, like blending in was a practiced skill. By the time they started pulling men out of their seats and leading them to the door, Will had pegged them and steeled herself. In her heart of hearts, there was only one true criminal, and she knew his face well from the wanted posters.

Will recognized Ben Wade the first time she saw him: not as tall as she'd expected, but with a concrete presence that more than made up for it. She recognized Charlie Prince, the understatedly notorious right-hand man who had the stillest hands she'd ever seen, and the bluest eyes. She recognized various faces, names, all gunmen, all killers. Men like these could kill boys like Tommy before anyone could blink, could draw, shoot, and take off as easy as the sun shines or the wind blows or the heat comes off the sand in waves.

In roughly five seconds she worked this out, and was unafraid.

It didn't take her long to figure out the degree to which Ben Wade was in charge. The men didn't seem to want to sit down until he did; they loitered around the tables and shuffled their feet until he had settled himself at one end of the bar, at which point they joined him. When he tipped his hat to her, they all mimicked him. He ordered the drinks and Will, understanding the hierarchy, poured his first. He didn't look at her, and she was glad, because she didn't think she could have handled herself if she'd been made to meet his eyes. A cold fury was pulsing through her, turning her blood thick and syrupy and making her head pound. The same hands that gripped the glass were the hands that had held the gun that killed her brother, left him to bleed in the desert.

She could shoot him right now, she thought as she screwed the cap back on the alcohol and returned it to its place on the wall behind the bar. She was considering it, too, taking the pistol out from under the counter and shooting the bastard right between the eyes. She was a quick shot, and it wasn't doubt that stopped her; it was her father. He was sitting at home right now, waiting for her to come and feed him dinner. Will could have killed Ben Wade if she wanted to, but she imagined that the still hands of Charlie Prince wouldn't remain so if someone took his master from him. Will would die just as surely as Wade.

"The wagon's ready in the back," said a male voice from behind her. She cooled, listened. "James and Arden are loading it up. It's small. Two horses will take it, easy."

Will felt a chill creep up her spine, an electrifying bout of excitement. A wagon meant they were moving something. Money.

"Good," said another man who could only be Ben Wade. "We'll ride across the border. You'll meet us there later."

"Me? Boss -- "

"Yes you, Charlie," said Ben Wade. "You're the only person I trust not to run once you've got the wagon. We'll leave today. In one week, when the chaos has died down, you'll wait until it gets dark and then you'll follow us. We'll meet you at the Hotel Reina in Nogales. Can you handle that?"

"Of course," said Charlie Prince, opting to be flattered by his boss's offering of trust rather than insulted by the condescending tone to his voice.

"Then we don't have a problem, do we?" Will heard him drain the rest of his drink and set it down on the bar. "Excuse me, miss."

She turned around and kept her face determinedly expressionless. He smiled politely and she felt every inch of her revolt from within. It took all of her strength not to show it.

"Room for one," he said. "A week's stay."

She took his money and got him his key. He stared at her strangely, examining her face in a close and concentrated way that was unnerving. She kept her eyes fixed firmly on his, refusing to be weak and turn away.

"You look familiar," he said at last. "Have we met before?"

"I'm sure that I'd remember our meeting, Mr. Wade," she said dryly. He chuckled.

"Yes, I'm sure you would," he said, shifting in his chair as if to see her from a new angle, "but I'll be damned if those aren't the greenest pair of eyes I've ever seen. I knew a girl with eyes like that once."

Will slid the room key across the table to him. "I'm not her," she said gently.

He smiled. "No," he said, "I suppose you're not."

He got up and his company followed him, replacing hats and pulling pants up with their hands looped beneath their belts. Even Charlie Prince, who'd been chosen to stay behind, got up to see Ben Wade out the door. They exchanged a brief and quiet goodbye at the door, none of which Will caught. Ben Wade tossed her one last look over his shoulder before he left, and she set her jaw. She would not do him the honour of letting him see her smile.

Charlie Prince looked much smaller and very alone once his comrades were gone. He didn't seem to know what to do with himself, and the air became thick with the silence that filled the empty room. Will should've said something to him; it was her job to make small talk with men who had nothing else to do, but she couldn't think of what to say. He was holding the key in his hand, watching his fellows leave on horseback.

"Can I do anything else for you, sir?" Will asked at last, but it didn't matter; he didn't seem to hear her, to remember that he was not alone in the bar. After a few minutes it must have occured to him because he turned around, but he didn't answer her question. He smiled in a way that was not entirely friendly and then left, walking down the hall to, she guessed, find the room whose number was marked on his key. She watched him go. When his back had disappeared, she started clearing away the glasses that they'd left on the bar, the wheels in her mind turning.

From what she'd heard, she could figure out most of what was going on. Ben Wade had just stolen money. A good amount of money, it sounded like, otherwise he wouldn't need a wagon to transport it. He was going to let the authorities put their heads and false pretences back on, giving Charlie Prince an easy out. He'd bring the money to them in Mexico and they'd disappear, once again slipping through the sheriff's fingers and under the radar. He was clever, Will had to admit, but he obviously hadn't counted on her having a head attached to her shoulders, because he hadn't considered the consequences of telling an outsider his entire plan.

So Will started to devise her own. She wasn't a bad person by nature, but she was human and she had needs. One was money. She and her father couldn't keep going the way they were; they needed to pay for their water, their food. Another was revenge. She hated to think of Ben Wade living the rest of his life thinking that he could take and do whatever he wanted. He should be made to pay for his crimes. Now she had a way to do that.

It was a simple enough plan. Maybe part of Will's problem was that she never paused to think about whether or not it was too simple, whether she wasn't giving the infamous Ben Wade (and his followers) enough credit. It's difficult to say whether this kind of thought process would have helped her.

She knew when Charlie Prince was planning to leave. One week from that day, he would wait until night and then he'd hook up his wagon and disappear. All she had to do was kill him before he skipped town. She'd take some of the money out of that wagon: enough to make sure that she wouldn't have to worry about herself anymore. Then she'd report Ben Wade's location to the sheriff so he could send one of his little scouting parties out and arrest him. Ben Wade would be put into prison and hung like any other man who stole from someone else. He would be cut down to size and destroyed.

Will smiled as she put the glasses in the washing tub, her dress sticking to her waist as she moved. Who said revenge was best served cold?

**

* * *

**Charlie Prince wasn't the type of person who enjoyed being idle. He loved planning for a job, loved the thrill of success. He knew that it was his responsibility to Ben Wade to stay behind and take care of the wagon, but it didn't make him any less uncomfortable to have to sit alone in the hotel room like a watch dog, waiting for one night, then the next, then the next, until he knew that the boss had reached Nogales and was safe.

Charlie's loyalty to Ben Wade was not something to be suspicious of on any count. It had been created out of debt by an honest man who had no reason to pretend that he was anything he wasn't. To assume that Charlie Prince had some ulterior motive was to assume that he'd beat around the bush if he did. He wouldn't. If he'd wanted something more than trust from Ben Wade, he would have taken it long ago.

Charlie knew in some deep place that Ben Wade didn't necessarily need him. He was an asset, certainly; he could shoot better than anyone else in the outfit besides the boss himself and he didn't particularly care what man the gun was aimed at. He didn't need to question why a man's life should be taken.

Sometimes things just went bad.


	4. Chapter 3: Type

_I just wanted to take a minute to thank you all for the kind reviews. Just by the way, I'm still expecting more, even though this chapter isn't exactly explosive._

* * *

**Chapter Three: Type**

Matthew Slater had not eaten that day. It would seem that all he had managed to do was lie in bed and sweat, the salty liquid congealing in the folds of his wasted neck. But Will knew better; the numerous empty bottles strewn across the bedroom spoke of a trip to the liquor store. Indeed, as she took the bottles downstairs to set on the kitchen table, she noticed that the jar of money she kept on the mantle was considerably emptier. She'd been telling herself for months that she needed to move it, to stow it safely away in her own bedroom, but she had yet to do the chore. It was like a final act of admittance, a farewell to the father that once had been. She didn't want to give up on him. She wanted to believe that half a year was not such a long time.

She dipped a cloth into a bowl of cool water and wrung it out before wiping the sticky residue off of her father's face and neck. He was staring out the window where sunset was approaching. Dusk was a very gradual thing in town: dark came slowly, swallowing the main street into crimson glow and shadow. Then the sun performed its swan song, blood red light exploding across the sky for a few brief but eternal moments before disappearing behind the flat horizon. Will couldn't tell if he was really observing these magical seconds or if he had retired to his drunken abyss for the night. He hadn't spoken a word to her since she'd come in, and her conversation with him would have been equally as stimulating had she been talking to a brick wall.

"You'll never guess who came in today," she said, plucking a stray hair out of the water on his forehead. "Real outlaws ¾ not just the petty thieves who usually keep me company." She sighed, held his empty eyes with her own. "I'd tell you who," she murmured, "but I think it'd only upset you. It certainly gave me a turn."

"Takes near an apocalypse to do that," Matthew rasped. "Tell me who it was."

Will paused; she was unaware that he'd been listening and was now unsure if she really wanted to tell him what had happened in the bar today. She wasn't sure if she felt comfortable with her father knowing that Ben Wade thought she looked familiar, thought her eyes were the greenest he'd ever seen.

"Charlie Prince," she said softly. If she couldn't tell him the whole truth, she'd tell him half of it.

"Charlie Prince," he repeated. "One of the most wanted men in Arizona. Did you talk to him?"

"Some," she replied. "He didn't seem the talkative type."

"I don't imagine so." A thought passed over his face, a realization. "Was Ben Wade not with him?" he asked. "Never heard of Charlie Prince going anywhere without Ben Wade."

"I'm sure he was close by."

"I'm sure…" His eyes started to droop under the weight of memory and alcohol. "If he'd been there, Will, what would you have done? Would you have killed him?"

"No, Daddy," she whispered. "I don't think I would have."

He nodded slowly, his head dropping.

"You're a good girl," he said. "I know I don't tell you enough… but you are…"

She held his hand as he crossed the border into that seductive country Sleep, his chest rising and falling steadily as his breathing fell into an easy rhythm. Her lower lip began to tremble as he went, and then her shoulders, and by the time he had fallen in deeply enough, she was shaking all over, the tears pouring down her face. She got unsteadily to her feet and shuffled awkwardly out of the room, one hand over her mouth. In the hallway she sank to the floor, her back to the wall, and cried in earnest. She feared sometimes that the story of six months ago would never stop haunting her, that she'd always be plagued by these instances in which she could not reign her tears to a halt as she thought of Terry's face in the last time she had seen him.

She feared sometimes too (and this fear was worse, infinitely worse) that she would forget that last time, that someday his face would slip a notch in her mind and be lost forever. Already the wear and tear of the months had taken their toll on Terry's everlasting smile, blurring its edges in the back of her mind.

Still, within a few moments her eyes had run themselves dry and she found that her hands had stopped trembling. She took a few deep, experimental breaths, and though they still shook in her throat, they did not overwhelm her into more tears. She relaxed, resting her weary head on the wall behind her, watching the dying light sink lower on her father's bedroom door. He did not call out to her, did not ask if she was alright. The drink had lulled him into apathy; she may as well have been alone in the house.

The past few months had made her wonder whether she shouldn't just sell their land ¾ the barn, too big for one horse, the house too spacious for an unmarried woman and her bedridden father. The real Matthew Slater would have been scandalized by the very suggestion of leaving the plot that had harboured him all his life, but Will didn't think this new version would mind, or even notice.

A worried sort of satisfaction brewed within her as she thought about the riches concealed in the wagon behind the bar. Within a few weeks, leaving her home would never again cross her mind as a plausible decision. She would stop measuring her waist with her hands to see if she'd lost any more weight from scraping meals together in meagre portions. There'd be no need to marry, even, not if she could manage by herself. Though she was not quite eighteen, she was dreading the idea of forever confining herself to one man's hand, one man's affection. To bearing a man's children, sacrificing her freedom in favour of bending over cradles and carrying soft little people on her hips. She enjoyed children, but they had always been kept at a safe distance. That the idea of having her own was mortally terrifying served as an omen, a warning not to follow in her mother's footsteps.

Will frowned, puzzled. She hadn't thought about her mother in a long time.

Mrs. Slater was, naturally, an inconsistent force in her daughter's life, and as such Will knew very little about her. Terry used to tell her stories when they were only children. They'd spend whole afternoons talking about the time that he'd spent with her, about the smell of her perfume and the touch of her lips on his forehead. Later, when she was alone, Will would indulge in these stolen memories and pretend they were hers. Now that Terry was gone, she had only the old stories left. If Matthew had spoken seldom of his wife before, his words had become even more scarce now.

Will went out to the barn and tended to Sam, shovelling out his stall and checking his water. She touched the velvety part of his snout and kissed it gently.

"Things are going to turn around for us," she promised. "Starting today, they're going to turn around."

Sam didn't answer; he never did. Will liked it that way. The last thing she needed was someone else giving her answers to questions she'd never asked.

She knew what she was doing, though maybe not what she was getting herself into. If someone had told her not to do what she wanted to do in the current situation, she wouldn't have listened. She'd be working the night shift in a few days, a good time before Charlie Prince was due to leave.

In a point of fact, Wilhelmina Slater had indeed crossed into a territory from which there was no return.


	5. Chapter 4: Misery

_I'm so, so, so sorry for not updating for so long. I just checked my email today and got all these Favorite Story reminders and my heart broke. I really do apologize, and again, because I know this isn't the first or last time I'll neglect you. I'm a horrible person. I know._

_Because I was so eager to update, I think this chapter ended up being kind of rushed. Please tell me in your reviews whether you thought it was all right; some of my friends have called my writing slow, and I want to know if this is better._

_I love you guys. Really, I do. And I'm sorry again._

* * *

**Chapter Four: Misery**

The night was hotter than the day when Will finally took what she perceived to be her last sunset shift. No way she was going to continue working as a barmaid after this. No more having her wrist stroked while she was pouring drinks. No more stepping outside to catch some measure of an ashen breeze. No more being ogled but never respected. With money she'd have rights, and everyone would call her Ma'am.

It was a dream come true, fate dumping such good fortune into her lap. Revenge and a new life all in one go. So she shouldn't have faltered.

But she did.

Working days, she acted normally, discreetly reviewing her plan again and again. She had it down to the point that she was troubleshooting in her sleep, coming up with solutions to any problem that might crop up. She'd resolved just about everything that she could think of, but there was one little kink: she was scared.

She'd never killed a man before. Certainly Charlie Prince was no innocent, but he was a man nonetheless. It didn't enter her mind to be frightened of him specifically (Why should she be? She'd never heard of Wade's gang doing anything to women but breaking their hearts), but in an ambiguous kind of way, she was frightened _for _him. Charlie Prince had promised to him no place but hell after death. Could she really do that to someone?

Sure she could. She was Will Slater, dammit.

And really, he had it coming, what with his being a murderer and all.

The night of reckoning came fast and, as though sensing that the cause of Will's internal moral dispute was about to erupt, the bar patrons left early. Will polished the pistol that was under the counter and laid it neatly on one of the tables. She sat down and stared at it. It was kept loaded, but neither she nor Jocelyn had ever been in a tight enough fix to need it. She had seen one of these before, but this number didn't look the same. It was cold and steely and menacing, and it seemed to speak to her very clearly.

_Don't do it._

She swallowed in the darkness. She hated the night shift; there were too many shadows in the big room, too many places that could conceal the monsters of her nightmares.

She wondered if Charlie Prince's eyes would still be blue in this light.

Christ alive, she was losing her mind.

Best to do it now, then. With a mind came a conscience, and she didn't want that back.

She picked up the gun and made for the rooms.

* * *

Charlie Prince prided himself on being fast. He was fast to get his guns out, fast to react, fast to get the situation over and done with. This particular situation was slow and disappointing, but it had taught him something already.

He was a fast learner.

He knew off by heart what floorboards creaked in the hall that lead to the room he was staying in, and where his breathing echoed off of hollows in the walls. He could hear people coming down the halls even when they were dead silent, which no one really was.

So she must have been very good, because he didn't hear her until she was right outside his room.

Normally he wouldn't have worried about someone passing by, even if it was the dead of night. But she paused, and then it was too long for a pause, then it was a hesitation, a wait. He couldn't hear her breathing but he knew she was no man by the smell of her when he leaned in close to the door. Men didn't wear rose oil.

He hadn't smelled that in a long time, not since he was a child with a mother. The boss was the one who was fond of women. Charlie Prince was fond of no one.

He slipped into the shadows beside the door and waited for her, knowing she'd come in gun first. He'd never had an attempt on his life by a woman before. He'd never killed a woman before.

He thought it would be interesting.

* * *

Will swung the door open quickly; the doors creaked when pushed slow. The room was darker than she'd anticipated, and she held tightly to her gun, keeping it pressed to her waist so she could feel its reassuring weight. The bed was empty and the bathroom door was ajar, the room beyond pitch black.

She had no idea how she could have been so stupid.

His hands were warm, at least. She loathed being touched by cold hands. He put one over her mouth and used the entire free arm to clamp her hands to her sides. She didn't drop the gun, but he wrestled it from her. Years later she would reflect upon it and wonder exactly how it was he had managed to throw her off course so completely, but he did. The gun was gone and she was pinned to his chest.

"Don't scream," he whispered in her ear, "or you'll be the sorriest person in the state. Do you understand?"

She sighed resignedly and nodded, still shockingly calm.

"Well, fuck," she said dryly, but from behind his hand, it sounded more like she wanted to kill a duck. This was the one scenario that was the most likely to happen, and the one scenario she hadn't counted on. Arrogance rendered a man blind, she remembered her father saying. She never was one for following good advice.

She lifted her right foot and stomped on his, but he didn't let go. She squirmed and tried all possible means of slipping out of his grip, but he held fast. Even if he did release her, what was she going to do? Flee? She had no doubt that he would recover quickly and grab her again. This was ridiculous.

"Are you going to kill me?" she asked, easily giving the impression that she didn't care. Really, she was thinking about her father in bed, Sam in his stall, Jocelyn coming in tomorrow, Tommy sitting at home with his horrible mother. She didn't want to die, but she wasn't going to beg. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

Charlie took a moment to answer. He wanted to kill her. Desperately. It should have been easy.

"Why were you going to kill me?" he asked instead of answering. "What do you know?"

"I'm… I'm not going to tell you!"

Women.

"I'm the one with the gun," he said.

"It doesn't matter."

"Do you want to die?"

"Does it matter? You'll kill me either way."

She had him there.

He turned her around and pushed her against the wall, holding her by her throat. She stared at him defiantly with green eyes.

Shit.

Green eyes.

"The barmaid," he said.

This was problematic in the extreme. She knew where the money was (but he'd checked it this morning; why hadn't she taken any?). She knew who he was. She knew where the boss was headed.

She knew where the boss was headed.

"Did you tell anyone?" he demanded.

She coughed, pushing at his arm. "Who would I tell?" she asked.

"The law."

"And they'd confiscate all your money and give it back to some bank," said Will, incredulous at how easily he'd dismiss her for some good little girl. "What good is it to me if it's there?"

He sighed. If it was really money she was after, he could just pay her off. But at the same time, he couldn't risk her running off and telling the sheriff once she got paid. The boss would be ambushed and Charlie would be held accountable.

He really did have to kill her.

And he'd never killed a woman before.

His foot throbbed. Fragile. Sure.

"You've put yourself in a world of trouble," he said.

"Oh, I realize that. What are you going to do, Charlie Prince?" she asked. "Put me out of your misery?"

Jesus, she was bold.

"No," he said. "Better."


	6. Chapter 5: Onward

__

I just wanted to add this note, as I forgot to answer a question in one of your reviews...

_Terrence (Will's brother) does not appear in the movie; he is my character too. I didn't mention that in the first chapter, but I'm telling you now. Sorry for any confusion._

_I'd like to apologize once again for not updating. I understand completely your fear of cliff-hangers. I'm updating early to try and rid myself of guilt. I can assure you that any time I don't update, it's for a good reason._

_Thanks so much for your kind reviews. There are only four lines of dialogue in this chapter, but I feel like you learn a lot about Charlie and Will, so I'm hoping to hear from you all again after you've read._

* * *

**Chapter Five: Onward**

When she was five years old, Will had gotten into a fight with Terry over whether or not she was irrational. Being five, she had no idea what irrational meant, but he said it like an insult so she took it to be one, and argued her case as best she could without an accurate definition of her offence. Terry had won, though she'd never given in to his victory. Looking back on this last week or so, Will finally had to admit defeat. She was irrational. None but an irrational woman would listen so intently to illegal information, then try to use it for her own purposes. None but an irrational woman would go to Charlie Prince's room with the intention of actually killing him in his sleep, especially when he was due to be leaving after dark and would thus be awake anyway.

At this point, she had passed Irrational. She was now at the border of that simple state, Stupid.

After their brief scuffle and exchanging of words, Charlie had his Will most impolitely over the head and dumped her, unconscious and bound at the wrists and ankles, into the back of the wagon. When she woke up, she felt as though her head might split open, and her limbs ached from spending the night on the hard wagon floor. A large canteen of water was sloshing obnoxiously next to her ear, and beneath that, she could hear the wagon wheels creaking as they moved sluggishly onward. The heat was ridiculous; the dampness of her dress had evolved to a fully fledged soaking. She was sure she smelled horrible, but she wasn't in fine enough company to be concerned.

Getting into a sitting position was quite a feat; every time the wheels made contact with a rock, the entire wagon jostled and she lost her balance. She wriggled like a beached fish and pushed herself backward with her tied legs. Eventually she found a way to sit with her knees against her chest, her back on the wagon wall. Heavy crates tottered ominously on either side of her. Some she recognized as bank crates; others must have been full of Charlie's supplies. She could see no knives or warped metal or other sharp ends with which to cut her bindings. She supposed if she rubbed the rope against the crates fast enough, the rope would snap. That or catch fire, which was not a risk she was willing to take. Besides which, her shoes were missing. Out of the end of the wagon she could see a long stretch of desert, the kind of ground that would not be particularly agreeable without shoes. She really was in quite a fix, and the worst part was not knowing where she was going to end up.

She had some idea, of course. Charlie Prince's predetermined destination was the Hotel Reina in Nogales, Mexico. Will had never been outside of Arizona, but it was well known that Mexico was safe ground for Ben Wade and a number of other outlaws; they weren't wanted there. Once Charlie Prince crossed the border with the money, Ben Wade and his outfit were in the clear. The way she figured it, she'd be dumped in Nogales and the criminals would be on their merry way, at which point she'd still have no money, and her information would be useless to boot. She had no idea how she could have been so completely selfish. Her father was probably sitting at home right now without breakfast in his belly, waiting for a lunch that wouldn't come.

Or maybe he wouldn't notice her absence at all. He would tell no one that she was missing and no one would know and no one would come looking for her. She'd already more than proved that she was useless when it came to a game of wits with Charlie Prince; she wasn't going to get out of this alone.

Her best bet was to walk carefully, treat this like the delicate situation that it was. She sincerely doubted that Charlie Prince had a good side for her to try and get on, but being a notorious criminal had to call for some measure of logic. If she could convince him that it was in his best interest to let her go…

She watched him driving for a few moments. There was a definite awareness to him; he knew she was awake. From what she could gather, he was uncompromising in essence, a man of few words. He wasn't about to waste his breath on the likes of her, but chances were, if she talked, he'd listen without taking an active role in the conversation. She needed to get started on him right away, but back here, she was too easy to ignore. She took the ropes around her wrists between her teeth and tugged. He'd tied them tightly, but he had been in too much of a hurry. All they'd take was patience.

* * *

He heard her little intake of breath when she woke up, heard the ropes rubbing together as she began working on her escape. He was preoccupied with other things, and was faster than her besides. He wasn't worried about her trying to leave.

What he was worried about was the boss, sitting in the hotel seducing some waitress. They were on a tight schedule this time around; they weren't even spending the night in the Reina once Charlie arrived. They needed to get on, as was always necessary with large loads. But because he had been so distracted by her the first time he saw her, it was largely possible that Ben would delay their progress in order to spend some time in bed with Green Eyes.

Maybe it was better just to kill her.

And that wasn't a problem. The "just" was the problem. It was sticking, somehow. He'd never had to think about whether or not to kill someone before, because he'd never regretted it afterwards. It was what he did. It came naturally. Now, though, when faced with killing _her_, he was finding himself debating over it as if it were something he had to actually think about. What was worse was that he was thinking of it as more of a joke than a feasible option.

It wasn't a God thing. Sure, Charlie believed in God and the Ten Commandments and all of that, but he wasn't afraid to kill or steal or make bad people out of good ones, because the type of person he figured God for wouldn't care. He didn't tend to lie, because lying was for people who wanted to keep secrets, and he had no illusions about himself and therefore did not need to keep the dark, dirty pieces of his soul from anyone. If it mattered to someone, that was their problem.

He'd never killed a woman because Ben had told him not to, and Ben's word was law. Ben had this thing about women that Charlie could never understand; they were all beautiful, all sacred, all worth good manners and charm. He never saw them as talkative or irritating, or if he did, he never said so. Charlie didn't question Ben's command, but Ben explained nonetheless: any woman could be some man's wife, some baby's mother. They were but humble outlaws. Who were they to take a much needed woman from someone else's life?

Well, Charlie thought, a woman was worth no more than a man, and more often than not worth less than the man she was married to.

He didn't think Green Eyes was married. She didn't look the type, and he'd never heard of a married woman working in a bar. He hadn't seen a ring on her finger when he was tying her wrists together.

The scorching heat was coming off the sand in more than waves; there were fucking oceans out there above the horizon. His palms were slipping up and down the reigns and he wouldn't be surprised if there was a puddle on the seat of his pants. Everything was sticky and heavy and just sitting was exhausting, like a giant hand was trying to push him down but he just kept staying up. Foam was streaming down the sides of each horse and they were moving at least ten times slower than Charlie had anticipated. Another thing he hadn't anticipated was having a second mouth to feed and water, a second body taking up space.

If worst came to worst, they'd stop in Sierra Vista and regroup. He didn't think it'd be that bad, but you never could predict just what was going to happen.

* * *

By the time Will got the ropes off, the sun had lowered considerably in the sky and her hair was drowning in the sweat on her forehead. She got the ropes off of her ankles with ease once her hands were free. There were red marks where they had been and the air moved over them like water, cool and refreshing. She didn't feel the sense of accomplishment she thought she'd have felt. Instead, she just wanted a long, hard sleep. The bedroll that was curled up in the corner on the other side of the wagon was most tempting, but she was on a mission. If she didn't get him to turn her loose today, she'd be riding shotgun all the way to Nogales, and there'd be plenty of time to sleep until they got there.

She pulled herself to her hands and knees and crawled around the tottering crates toward the front of the wagon, There, she all but dragged herself up to the bench beside Charlie Prince. He seemed unperturbed by her sudden appearance and undaunted by the heat. She hated him already.

The plan was to start ragging on him like only women could do, make him sorry for taking her like this, make him turn around. But Will was never much of a talker, and her plans rarely went accordingly (such had she gotten herself into the present situation). She found herself saying, "How long until we reach Nogales?"

"It's a week's journey in good conditions," said Charlie Prince, as though they'd already been having a conversation and this was just a new topic for them to discuss.

"Are these good conditions?"

"No."

She lifted the loose strands of her hair off the back of her neck and tucked them into what was left of the bun she'd put in yesterday. There was no point in asking how long the journey would take with the heat and the extra cargo. He'd already put her off conversation; his cold indifference was unnerving.

She swung her legs around so they faced forward, matching his, and rested her cheek on the wagon frame. With any luck she'd fall asleep.


	7. Chapter 6: Bone Lonely Places

_Hello again, and happy Canada Day for those of you in Canada, or for you Canadians in other parts of the world. Holla!_

_So we've got some more dialogue in this chapter, some more personality development, and some foreshadowing (see if you can spot it). I think I'm doing a better job of updating... right? Trying to get back in your good graces._

_I know this one's a little short. It's really bugging me that lots of my chapters seem to be that way... I'm going to work on making them longer. Read read read!_

* * *

**Chapter Six: Bone Lonely Places**

There wasn't a single moment to search the wagon. For someone who seemed to have all his attention focused on the path forward, Charlie was incredibly observant. He moved when she moved, heard everything. Whenever she shifted one of his crates, he looked back at her with eyes that could have created a skating rink in hell. Eventually, she gave up.

She wasn't really sure what she was looking for. Not money; she knew where that was. Something sharp, maybe, so she could make another attempt at killing him, although she didn't think that would do her a whole lot of good at this point. It may have looked like they were going in a straight line through the godforsaken desert, but she knew better. If she took over this wagon, she'd be lost in a matter of hours and dead in a matter of days.

So the only thing there was to do was wait, and that she did.

Charlie stopped the wagon when it got too dark to see and set up a fire, upon which he heated up beans and the driest biscuits Will had ever eaten. She made a point of not complaining.

She knew how fast the temperature dropped in town, but she'd never experienced anything like the sudden biting cold that came in the middle of nowhere when there were no clouds in the sky to hold heat. Charlie grudgingly threw her a blanket and she took it without expressing her gratitude, clenching her teeth against the shivers that shook her and enduring like a weathered traveller. She couldn't imagine why someone would live like this willingly until she laid on her back and looked at the stars.

There were thousands of them, stretching out beyond her vision, beyond the ground, it seemed. The sky was a huge, endless canopy of punctured ink. She felt like if she reached high enough, she would scoop away glowing handfuls of fire.

Suddenly, her suffering -- not just now, but all the suffering in her entire lifetime -- seemed entirely irrelevant to her, to the world. It was so big, her problems were just a pinprick in its massive finger.

"I never realized the sky was so big," she said.

She thought she heard Charlie laugh, but she couldn't be sure.

When the morning came, the silence between them buzzed. Charlie picked up his sleeping mat and rolled it into a cylinder before throwing it unceremoniously in the back of the wagon. Will did the same with her own blanket and jumped in after it just soon enough, for Charlie had already grabbed the reigns and started moving.

Breakfast was cold leftovers from dinner; Will sat up next to Charlie and ate quietly, watching the horses move. She wondered how Sam was doing, if anyone was thinking to take care of him. It had been a little over a day, so surely everything was moving on without her. Who was taking care of Matthew Slater, alone in his bed? What had Jocelyn said to Arthur?

"Are you married?" she asked at one point.

She thought she saw him startle, but he hid it well.

"Don't start asking questions now," he said.

"Just making conversation, Charlie Prince. If you travel without talking all the time… well, I wouldn't be surprised if you're just as crazy as they say you are."

They stopped at midday to give the horses a rest and a drink, and Will got out of the wagon to stretch. She reached up and pulled her hair out of its bun, running her fingers through it to separate it. She'd never before wished so desperately that she didn't have any to worry about; it made the back of her neck damp and her skin itch.

She caught Charlie looking at her from the horses' other side.

"What?" she said.

He continued looking at her, unperturbed. She was suddenly, painfully aware of every small movement she made, the shifting of her hips, the way her body curved. She always felt this way when men cast their eyes on her, like her dress was too tight. She refused to drop her eyes.

"Did I say anything?" he asked.

She watched him carefully. "No," she said, "I suppose not."

"Get back in the wagon," he said, hopping up.

She fell back from the horses a little ways.

"I'm going to walk for a while," she said. Charlie shrugged and urged the horses on.

* * *

She was good looking. No, that was an understatement. She was good looking before. With her hair down, she was something else.

He'd always been able to restrain himself, at least better than anyone else in the outfit. About a million other things came before women. He was a busy man, and women took up time. They were good for one thing, but it could never just be that one thing; they wanted to talk, and then they wanted to get married, and then they wanted children, and then they wanted you to stay home and take care of the children.

She'd caught him looking at her and hadn't said much of anything. Maybe she really wasn't the marrying type.

Of course, it didn't matter what type she was. What did that have to do with anything? If he decided he wanted her, he'd have her and that would be that. If he decided he didn't (which, he was sure, would be the case; her very presence was irritating in the extreme), he'd put up with her until Nogales. Either way, he was leaving her there.

She walked just behind the bench on the wagon where he sat, so he couldn't quite see her but could hear her footsteps underneath the horses' hooves digging into the dirt. He would have liked to take a walk himself; his legs were cramping up. But he knew the kind of exhaustion that so easily overtook people who exerted themselves without necessity. She'd get tired.

She'd asked him if he was married. How could he possibly be married with the kind of lifestyle he lead? It was the most idiotic question he'd ever heard.

It had already been a day and a half and he wasn't nearly as far along as he'd like to be. He'd heard her last night, what she'd said about the sky. He, too, had never realized such a thing. The sky was fucking enormous. How was he ever going to get to the other side when it was so big?

He was getting delirious. It was the heat. It was the smell of roses. They were all he could smell, beyond the rank scent of horse coat and the dry stench of desert sand and the harsh blast that was the wind. They were all tainted by roses.

He clenched his fingers down on the leather reigns, stilling them. His hands were shaking. His hands never shook.

* * *

Will could remember, vaguely, a song about God. She didn't remember the words, exactly, just a woman's voice humming the tune, a woman with a voice like an angel. This memory had always followed her around, perhaps because she had no idea who the woman was. She used to think it was her mother, sometimes, in her private hours when she lay in bed. She used to think that perhaps her mother had not died in childbirth after all, that she had lived long enough to sing her baby girl sweet church songs before she fell asleep every night. There was a bone lonely place inside of Will that longed for this to be true, although she knew it couldn't be.

Losing a mother (even a mother that you never had, not really) is like losing your home, and the earth it stood on, and the sky that stood above it. It was like counting the stars and having each one you looked at flicker and die out.

She had been there for her mother's funeral, just a baby. She wondered who had held her while they spoke the sad words and people cried. Her father had told her that she'd cried at her mother's funeral, that it looked like a black sheet were mourning because she was so small, she couldn't be seen beneath it. She wondered if he were the one that held her, if they held each other while each of their stars fell from the sky.

The morning after she'd looked at the stars, outside by the fire, she'd pulled rocks out of her calves and felt like the unluckiest person in the world. Her suffering _was _irrelevant, perhaps, but it didn't stop it from being there. With such a tiny view into a great big world, all contained under a greater and bigger sky, how could she not muddy the difference between important and not? What she felt was the only thing she would ever feel.


	8. Chapter 7: Balance

_I know it's a bit early to be updating again, but this chapter just poured out of me. The past two were a little boring, I noticed, so this is where things start to pick up._

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Balance**

To say that it all went wrong on the third day would imply that it was once going right. Will was sure that she was going to have scars from all the gravel that became somehow embedded in her legs as she slept during the night, and even the stars did not make up for the aching loneliness of not hearing the swish of alcohol in her father's bottle just down the hall. She didn't think she'd miss such shallow things as that, that and good food, something to rise to in the morning, gossip with Jocelyn, Tommy Levine's mid-afternoon visits. She had felt like something was missing ever since Terry was killed, but now she was beginning to see just how much she had taken for granted. How did people get used to snapping off their roots like this?

On top of that, her brief bouts of conversation were few and far between. She had never disliked silence, had enjoyed it, in fact, for she held company with many people who simply talked too much. But she'd never gone two and a half days speaking as little as she had. She got a funny, tingling sensation in her throat, like her voice were dying and trying to tell her. Her mind started buzzing with all kinds of things that would have liked to be said but were stuck inside. She started walking outside of the wagon more and more often during the day so that she could at least mouth the words, outline the things that she'd say if she were sitting on the end of her father's bed or standing behind the bar. Not that she'd be there, if she had the choice. She was actually doubting, now, that she'd be able to go back to working at the bar. It had proved to be very dangerous, exposing oneself to the talk of criminals. She was in this mess because she'd offered herself the opportunity to dabble in other peoples' business. She needed to pull herself away from that, if she needed to do anything, for she knew within reasonable doubt that it would not be long before she committed the same offence. This guilt, too, ate at her as she spent hour after hour in the baking sun with her three silent companions (she had begun to count the horses).

So things were bad. But, in hindsight she realized, they got worse in a hurry.

She wouldn't have seen the city so early on if she hadn't grown so accustomed to the look of a flat horizon. It was just a little dot on the skyline, but it was unmistakable: civilization.

Charlie caught her looking easily enough.

"Don't go getting any ideas now," he said. "That's Sierra Vista. We're stopping there, not staying the night, not pausing for any funny business. You make to run, I will shoot you. Do you understand?"

Will sighed. "Why would I think of leaving?" she asked. "I'm having such a truly wonderful time."

"A yes or no will work just fine."

"Yes," she said, "I understand."

"Good. Now sit down and shut up. We'll be there before it gets dark."

"Then what?"

"Then we'll be there."

"No," she said, exasperated, "after that."

"I suppose I'll get what I need to get, and then we'll shove off."

"You'll just walk into a store?" she said.

"I've got two legs for it."

"Oh good then; my powers of observation fail me not," she said. "Do you not think people will recognize you?"

"No."

"Okay," she said in surrender. "I recognized you, though. You might want to watch out for that."

"I'll take it into consideration," he said, in a tone that suggested she shouldn't hold her breath.

"Your conversational skills are truly lacking," said Will as she retired to the back of the wagon. Charlie Prince's company was about as good as having no company at all.

They continued moving through the uneventful desert. It took a few hours for them to get close enough that Will saw the first building, if it could be called that. It was really more of a shack, far too small to give her the impression of danger.

"What is that?" she asked. "Someone's house?"

Charlie didn't answer, so she figured it was something he wasn't happy about. She studied it more closely and recognized it as a legal outpost, a jail in miniature where they'd keep drunks who were disturbing the peace. That meant that men of the law would be hanging around. She felt her heart leap. If she could just attract their attention somehow, let them know what kind of trouble she was in… if she could point out to them who it was that drove the wagon, surely she'd be saved.

She shifted around. "I'm just going to -- "

"You're going to stay put is what you're going to do."

She would have expected nervousness, but she knew by now that Charlie Prince didn't do nervous. His voice rang with authority and confident calm, and she did as she was told. She looked around for something with which to make noise when they were closer. There was nothing. She almost disbelieved the fact that she'd surprised him, he was so prepared for a hostage.

The minutes ticked past and the distance between the wagon and the outpost grew smaller. Will could feel the sweat on her forehead beading and sliding down, but she was too uneasy to move to wipe it off. She wanted to be inconspicuous, knowing that if she attracted Charlie's attention, she'd be bound and gagged and shoved behind something with no hope of getting loose in time.

Finally, from her position at the opening of the wagon's canvas, she watched them go past the edge of the porch in front of the shack. A man was standing on the porch, an officer with a wide brimmed hat that blocked his face from her view. Charlie cast her a quick look and she moved farther back in the wagon, her eyes on the twin pistols in his belt. Determined? Yes. But not suicidal.

"Hold up there, mister," said the law man. "That's an awfully big wagon you've got there. What's your cargo?"

"Nothing special, sir," said Charlie Prince. Will was sure the law man didn't catch the venom beneath the polite tone. She looked again at the pistols. Someone was going to die here, if she didn't make a move. She climbed up from the back of the wagon and made herself evident to the law man.

Better kidnapped than killed. Better four more days of this boredom than another person dead in the dirt.

"Excuse me, sir," she said. "We're just passing through. On our way to the border, you see, to take care of my sister's kids. She's very sick."

"Sick sister, is it?" the law man said, looking up. Will felt her stomach drop. "Now Miss Wilhelmina, I happen to know for a fact that you've got a dead brother, but not a sister to your name."

Charlie looked from Will to the law man to Will and seemed to deflate slightly, recognizing the bad luck he'd come across bringing her along.

Tough shit, Will thought bitterly, and gave the law man a smile that was more of a grimace. She recognized that double chin, those weak, knobbly hands, those endless dark eyes. The irony was far too cruel.

"Mister Hammond," she said.

He smiled a near-toothless, slimy smile, looking her up and down in a way that made the blood turn to bile in her veins.

"Lord," he said. "You're not a baby anymore."

"We really are just passing through," said Charlie. "None of us need any trouble."

"The only trouble to be had will be yours, Mr. Prince," said Mr. Hammond. "Oh yeah -- I know who you are. You've caused us quite a lot of trouble in these last few months, driving your money back and forth. I'll have you know that if you draw your gun on me just now, there'll be hell to pay."

"What hell?" said Charlie, drawing anyway.

"You shoot me, and I will have you for gunning down an officer of the law. You don't really want that, do you?"

"I could care less." He cocked the gun.

Mr. Hammond smiled. "Shoot me, then," he said.

Will sighed. Only men.

"Okay," she said, "so the way I figure it, there's no point in anybody shooting anybody. If you were going to arrest us, you would have done it by now. What is it you want?"

"I could do with some money," he said, "but now that I think of it, money's an awful common thing."

"_What do you want, Hammond?"_

Hammond grinned and turned to Charlie Prince.

"You can get on, no trouble to be had," he said, "so long as she stays here."

"Fuck you," said Will.

"She's of a certain use to me," said Charlie.

Hammond laughed. "I'm sure she is."

"Alright, Mister… Hammond, was it?" said Charlie. "The way I see it, you've got two options. Option one: You go back inside and enjoy the rest of your quiet day, and have another one tomorrow and the day after that. Option two is the stupid option. Option two says you make a fuss and don't go back inside at all."

"Or," said Mr. Hammond, "option three says -- "

"There is no option three," said Charlie, and shot him.

* * *

"You know," said Ben Wade to the dark haired waitress he was in bed with, whom he knew spoke not a word of English, "there are some people who believe that every action has an equal reaction."

* * *

It must have been a few hours before the cavalry arrived. Mr. Hammond lay in the dark, his chest heaving, blood coming out from under his shirt and from behind his teeth. He looked up into the eyes of the sheriff and said, "He shot me."

"Who shot you, Hammond? Who?"

"Charlie Prince… came by… big covered wagon… full of money… had a girl with him…"

"Can you describe the wagon, Mr. Hammond?" asked one of the other men standing in the sun.

Mr. Hammond grinned, his teeth outlined in red.

"I most certainly can," he said.


	9. Chapter 8: Introduction

**Chapter Eight: Introduction**

Will turned away, her hands instinctively rising to hide her face. After the shot had echoed and faded out, she exhaled shakily, and in the silence that followed, she heard -- it was illogical, certainly, but she could have sworn to it -- the blood pouring from Mr. Hammond's wound, making little trails in the dirt. She turned around, her hands still foolishly raised, saw a flash of crimson and sweaty skin, and had to snap her eyes shut again. She was the farthest thing from squeamish, and did not think it was the sight of blood that had made the bile rise so quickly in her throat. Rather, it was the way her world had turned on its head in the span of sixty seconds. There was no such thing as security, as home, as life. Or, at least, it didn't matter as much as she thought it did, not when man could play God so easily.

Charlie hopped off the wagon, dust rising in his wake. He walked to where Mr. Hammond lay and nudged him with the toe of his boot. The faint rasping sound that came loose was not enough to assure him that another shot need be wasted. He turned around, looked over the wagon's canvas, but it had been a clean shot: no blood splattered. Good. He put his gun back in his holster.

Will watched all of this with what would have been curiosity, had her body been able to register it properly. The occasions upon which she had experienced this same dulling of the senses were few and far between: Once, thirteen years ago, midwinter -- this she remembered vividly, the snow on the ground, the frost on the windowpanes, and the way it took only moments for tea to cool and water to freeze -- she had caught some airborne malady and started running a fever. Matthew Slater (pre-bottle Matthew Slater, Matthew Slater with son and sanity) had tried everything in the book, every foul tasting syrup and herb in stock, but Will had remained plagued by fever-dreams and shockingly hot to the touch. Eventually there had been no other choice: he drew her a cold bath and carried her, shivering already, her temperature differed so from the one outside, to it. The shock was immediate, sprinting up her limbs and into her brain as soon as her toes touched the water. She recalled a blur of colour and a rather lot of screaming, and after that, the initial pain died down and the kitchen swam; she heard only the one of her father's voice, not the words or the expression in them, had only a general idea of cold, not an understanding of the feeling itself. The second time had been when Terry died -- when they told her he was dead. The pictures of the world had not flowed together then, as they had in the cold water; they stopped. What were words. What was time. Where was Terry.

"Is he dead?" she asked.

Charlie didn't answer. She didn't need him to.

He took his original place behind the reigns of the horses, and she sat next to him, and, if not for the roaring in her mind, it would have been as if what was had never been. The wagon lurched forward.

"You didn't have to kill him," she said. When he didn't respond, she continued, "You could have just left me there. You could have --"

"I'm not doing you any favours!" said Charlie sharply. "What I did -- and everything I do, just so we're clear -- is for me, about me, for the greater good of _me. _You don't even come into it."

Will raised her eyebrows slightly. She hadn't been expecting such a speech.

"Well good," she said at last. "That means don't have to thank you."

"What you have to do is keep quiet," Charlie muttered. "There wouldn't have been a situation if you hadn't run your mouth."

"Don't flatter yourself," said Will coolly, crossing her arms. "In all seriousness, I think he would have died either way."

"You said it didn't have to happen," said Charlie before he could stop himself.

"No, I said you didn't have to do it. I never said that you wouldn't or that your nature pointed in a different direction. What I mean was, had you paused, thought about it, you would have realized that there was a whole other possible outcome."

Christ, but she could talk. And the word part was it made a kind of sense. She was one of those people, he realized -- one of the ones who could sell you something you didn't want, make you commit a crime when you had no reason to, make hurting yourself sound like a plan. The Boss could do that, too, convince you to sell your soul for the price of a bank wagon.

He frowned without really noticing that he was doing it.

"What's your name?" he asked.

This, at least, called for a ceasefire as she paused to think about it; he could almost hear the wheels turning in her mind, working to figure out whether or not she really wanted him to know such a thing.

"Will," she said, with an air of resignation. "My name's Will."

"Will," he echoed, "as opposed to… won't?"

"Will as opposed to Wilhelmina."

"I see." This amused him. He didn't know why it amused him. "Did your father name you, Will?"

"My father is none of your business."

Charlie chuckled. "I suppose you'll say the same thing if I ask you how you know Mr. Hammond."

"I will."

"Well, then. It seems we've run out of things to talk about."

Will sighed, and then said something that, to Charlie, was as surprising as it was accurate:

"You should have just killed me, Charlie Prince."

* * *

"He was driving the wagon," said Hammond as they lifted him onto the back of a horse. The metallic taste of blood was on his tongue, rising up in little streams from the place where the bullet had torn through his left lung. He was too arrogant to see Death standing on his doorstep, but there it stood all the same, ever patient for the clock to strike the right hour. "Will Slater -- that's Wilhelmina Slater --"

"Matthew Slater's little girl?" said one of the men. "The one who's gone and disappeared?"

"The same," said Hammond, irked only slightly by the interruption. "She's sprouted up since last summer, though. Wouldn't have recognized her, not for her mama's eyes."

"D'you think Prince kidnapped her?"

Hammond, beginning to doze now: "Hell if I know, but it didn't seem that way to me. Seemed pretty quick to spring to his defence, for a kidnapping victim."

"And Ben Wade wasn't with them."

Hammond was starting to feel dizzy, starting to feel uneasy.

"No," he said forcefully. His ability to speak was deteriorating, his words meshing together. "No, he most certainly wasn't… but if Prince was going… Wade will be…"

"Hammond? Hold on, okay? We'll get you to a doctor."

Hammond shook his head, trying to clear it. "Wade will be…"

Death stepped forward now, reached his hand out in greeting.

"By God, he'll be close."


	10. Chapter 9: Sees the Line

_Does my long (long long long long long) absence even merit an excuse? No. So I'm not going to give you one. Instead, I am going to give you an action packed chapter, which I hope will at least kind of make up for things._

_As usual, not going to promise that I'll do better, because chances are, I won't... But I will say, whenever my favourite authors don't update, I hold grudges, so if you don't review, understood, and taken as punishment for being neglectful. _

_(Know, however, that I am working on Chapter Ten.)_

* * *

**Chapter Nine: Sees the Line**

They didn't even clear the town line before the cavalry caught up with them. The sun hit the horizon in a flash like a wink from a dragon's eye before the glare was cut by the flat line of the desert. The main street was closing down, signs being turned around, children disappearing with their hands in their mothers' hands. Will sat in the back of the wagon with her hands folded in her lap, nearly ready for sleep, though sleep would surely not be visiting her. By the time the first bullet was flying, she'd decided that if she never heard a gunshot again, it would be too soon.

The bullet ripped through the wagon's canvas and landed in Charlie's right shoulder with a short tearing sound, fast enough that he didn't even have time to curse before he'd fallen backward like a gutted fish. Will flinched out a little scream, instinctively pushing herself away from the fallen body.

The horsemen who had thrown the bullet came curling out from behind the buildings of the main street like smoke, their horses multicoloured blurs of foaming pelt. The few women remaining on the street ran for the last door remaining open, a dry goods store. The bell on the top of the door jangled every time the door passed back and forth between delicate hands.

Will looked around for something to cover the wound with and, when she found nothing, covered it with her hands, the blood flowing up from between her fingers like a rising tide. Charlie watched her with an expression of perplexed surprise on his face.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

Will opened her mouth to answer him but was interrupted by the man who rode up to the back of the wagon. He was holding a smoking pistol up next to his face, which was broken into a wide grin. The horse looked about ready to fall over, and the man himself was skinnier than what should be physically allowed. Will felt her stomach turn.

"Wilhelmina Slater," the man said.

Will nodded, not taking her hands off of Charlie's shoulder. "Yes."

The man pointed the gun at her, still grinning. "You'd do best to step out of the wagon now, miss. Hands where I can see them."

Will stood up slowly, ducking her head to avoid hitting the top of the wagon. The hot air hit her like a brick wall at the opening, and she had to squint to see past the sun's reflection on the still hot sand. It burned her bare feet when she dropped lightly to the ground. The man's horse was close enough that she could see the fine curves of its bones, the way its veins twisted around the muscle of its snout. She wiped her bloodied palms on the skirt of her dress and looked up at the man, who, still grinning, gestured toward his comrades with his gun. Will took a quick look into the wagon, where Charlie Prince was lifting himself up off the floor, before walking over to where the other men were dismounting their horses.

"Go in and get him," said the grinning man, backing away from the opening of the wagon, "and cuff her."

"What?" Will stepped back before the men even had a chance to step toward her.

The man pulled a small handful of fresh bullets from the pocket of his vest and started taking the used ones from his gun, tossing them into the dirt one by one, replacing them with the new ones.

"Mr. Hammond expressed a certain suspicion about your behaviour, when you and Mr. Prince rode through," he said, putting the leftover bullets back in his pocket. "He said for a kidnapping victim, you were pretty quick to avoid trouble from the law."

"Mr. Hammond threatened me," Will said. "Any suspicious behaviour on my part would surely arise from his being the way he is."

"Nonethess, you have been found with a criminal in your party," said the grinning man, "and a man of the law has been shot. You will be treated as guilty until such a time as you are proven innocent."

"And how long will that take?"

"I imagine you'll be required to stick around town until a fair trial can be held," he said. "Though I have to say, you haven't got a lot going for you. What's your story, Wilhelmina? A drunken doctor's no good for nothin', and I heard that's what your father is. Maybe you needed money."

"Pretty girl like you should have no trouble with money," said one of the men who'd approached her, the one with handcuffs dangling in his fist. Sweat had trailed through the dirt on his face, pooling in the lines between the fat on his neck. His lungs rumbled as he breathed, the watery rasp making spittle fly from his lips, which he licked swiftly enough that Will couldn't tell if she had seen it or not. "I could think of a couple things I would pay a pretty girl like you for."

Will reached over, quick as lightning, and pulled the man's pistol from its holster, pressing it against his temple.

"Is it part of the job description, for every cop in this town to be a pervert?" she asked.

"Now, now... don't go doing anything foolish."

"Funny." She cocked the gun. "I'm thinking it might be the most intelligent thing I'll ever do."

She pulled the trigger without giving herself time to think twice, and almost immediately after, a second gun had fired, and the grinning man fell backward off of his horse. Charlie swung his legs off the end of the wagon and landed on his feet, stumbling around in time for him to see Will turn her gun on the man who flanked her right, shooting him square between the eyes. He heard footsteps behind him and turned, firing at a man as he pulled his gun from his holster. Will had run around to the front of the wagon, where three other men were dismounting their horses, reloading. She cocked the gun twice, shot twice, and two of them hit the ground, leaving her gun empty. She pulled the trigger compulsively, as though pulling it would put bullets back in the chamber. The man, half off his horse, laughed until a bullet tore through his throat, splattering blood in an easy streak on the ground.

Charlie looked at Will from the other side of the dead man's body, the quizzical look still on his face. She glared at him and tossed the useless gun to the ground.

He opened his mouth as if to say something (in retrospect, he couldn't think of what there was to say), but a wave of dizziness washed over him, and the sky tilted, and he was on the ground.

As the adrenaline drained from her body, Will paused. He'd lost enough blood that if she left him, he would die. She could take the wagon and turn it around, find her way back home with more money than she could ever have dreamed of having, more money than she'd even planned on stealing.

But it wasn't about the money, was it? Really, it never had been.

She walked over to Charlie, knelt down, and opened his jacket to inspect the wound.

"The bullet went through," she said. "That's good."

Charlie coughed. "Great."

She closed his jacket again. "If we get you into the wagon, I can fix this. I know how to dress a wound and treat a patient. I can save your life."

He frowned. "Why would you do that?"

"For the greater good of me." She bit back a smile. "Do you want to live or not?"

* * *

Did he say yes? Did he allow her to help him off the ground and heave him into the wagon? Did she put temporary bandages on the wounds, to stop the bleeding? Did she pull the wagon out off the main street and beyond the town line, watching the buildings get smaller and smaller as she left them farther and farther behind? Did she stop to clean the wound and wrap it properly? Did Charlie Prince remain unconscious until long after Wilhelmina Slater had fallen asleep, at which point, did he wake up, look at her, and wonder both what on Earth he had gotten himself into, and what she was planning? Did he disregard his uneasiness and return to a fitful sleep?

If the answer to any of these questions were no... well, what more would be left to say?


	11. Chapter 10: Don't Forget

_First, you'll probably remember (I hope you'll remember) that in the previous chapter, I said Charlie remained unconscious until after Will was asleep. This was true, until I decide that I'd scratch that itch I've been having to add some actual conversation. Hope you'll forgive me._

_There's also a bit of a supernatural element in this chapter; I tried to make it subtle and not corny, but it was completely intentional. _

_So I updated pretty quickly this time, right? Maybe deserving of some reviews, right? _

_Maybe?_

* * *

**Chapter Ten: Don't Forget**

She had to hold both of his shoulders to pull him into a sitting position, which she imagined was more painful than Charlie Prince let on. From there, she hauled him to his feet, standing close enough that she could brace his weight if he fell over, though he wouldn't let her take it otherwise. He staggered his own way over to the wagon and found his own way up, half-walking, half crawling back to the place where his original pool of blood lay, where he sat beside the water canteen, his chest heaving. Will leapt up lightly after him and opened his jacket and the underlying shirt. When asked, he told her which trunk he kept the blankets in, and she opened it up to find them stacked untidily, still covered with dust from the previous night's camp. She pulled one out and ripped it with her teeth, tearing out first squares, covering each opening of the bullet's trail through Charlie's shoulder, then stripes, tying them around tightly to hold the bandages in place. By this point, Charlie's head was rocking, his eyes rolling, and when she'd finished and took his place behind the reigns, he had passed out of consciousness. She had told him to try to stay awake, but she wasn't about to enforce it. She only needed him alive.

The main street was still deserted when she left town, but she didn't expect it to stay that way for long; somewhere, someone would get up the guts to leave their shelter and go for help, at which point she was sure more people would be coming after them. She could no longer hide behind her innocence; she had shot those men, too.

It was dark by the time they were far enough that Will thought it fair to stop. She couldn't judge what time it was, nor where she was; she could scarcely see her own hand in front of her face. She lit a lantern and started a fire as the temperature began its steep descent, the sweat from the day cooling and encrusting her skin. She badly wanted a bath, but she wasn't about to waste water when they had neglected to pick any up today. Instead, she poured some into two of the glasses in the trunk Charlie kept near the front of the wagon, one for drinking, the other for soaking the dust out of new rags for Charlie's wounds.

The silence was more uncomfortable than she would have predicted; she thought she would have become accustomed to it after the many hours she'd now spent in Charlie's presence. His words were seldom and none of them friendly, and usually when he opened his mouth, she preferred that he didn't speak at all. Now, though, in the flickering light of the fire, she felt as though she would have killed again (and again and again) for someone to be breathing next to her, not even talking, just existing in a conscious state. She'd never missed Terry so much in her life.

She imagined him now, sitting beside her, lighting a cigarette on the fire, his long legs splayed wherever they'd happen to fall when he flopped to the ground in the careless way he always did.

"You're work, Will," he said. "I can't even count how many times you told me you couldn't stand the sight of me. Now I'm gone, you can't think of what to do with yourself."

Will looked up at him, studying what little of his face she could see in the dim light. He was exactly as she remembered him.

"I didn't mean it," she said softly. "Every cruel word I ever said to you was a lie."

"No it wasn't. Not in the situation, anyway." He laughed. "You have such a temper, you know that? How's a husband ever going to love you, if you get angry at every little thing? You need to learn to take life as it comes. Ride the river."

"What is this, a fucking life lesson?" She tossed a log onto the fire, tears brimming in her eyes. "I don't need any more of those. I don't need any more of this character building bullshit. I don't need you here to preach, I just need you here. I need you."

Terry shrugged, stubbing out the remains of his cigarette in the ashen ground. He left enough of it that he could have continued smoking. He always did that.

"You're doing fine," he said, and chuckled. "You're doing everything right."

"Then why am I here?"

"You know why. Don't tell me you don't. It wouldn't be happening if it wasn't supposed to." Terry glanced back at the wagon, as if it were about to spring on him, and turned back, shrugging his coat further up on his shoulders. "Don't worry," he added. "He's going to die."

Will looked away from the fire. "What are you talking about?"

Terry stood, brushing dust off of his pants. He took a deep, hearty breath of desert air and shook his head rapidly, as though he were a dog trying to get dry. He then turned down to her and smiled.

"I love you," he said. "Don't forget."

She stared him out into the darkness, and then he was gone.

"Who are you talking to?" Charlie asked, making her jump. He was sitting at the end of the wagon, his legs dangling over the edge.

"No one," said Will, turning around. "I hoped you weren't going to wake up again."

He gestured to the clean bandages she was drying by the fire. "Then what's that?"

"Prudent planning. Are you going to get down from that wagon, or do I have to help you?"

Charlie pushed himself off the edge of the wagon and walked over to where she sat, sitting across from her, his back to the fire.

"You're going to have to turn around," she said, moving. "I need the light."

They switched places, his face to it, her back to it, and she pulled back the shoulder of his shirt so she could see the bandages she'd tied on earlier that day. The blood hadn't even soaked through. She began peeling them off. Charlie watched her quietly, but he was itching, and when he couldn't take it any longer, he said, "Where'd you learn to shoot a gun like that?"

"How come you get to ask questions and I don't?"

"This isn't an equal sided situation," said Charlie sharply. "If I ask you a question, you answer it."

"What're you going to do if I don't?" asked Will, laughing. "Really. I've got it figured that you're not going to kill me. And trying to make any sort of peace with you is torture enough. What have you got to threaten me with?"

"Say I don't get you home okay," said Charlie coldly. "Your father will die."

Will tied a knot in the bandage she was wrapping, snapping it against the wound in a way that she knew would hurt, even if he didn't say anything.

"You keep your mouth shut about my father," she said. "You don't know anything about him, or fathers at all for that matter. I know your kind. You all may as well have come together in a gutter somewhere."

Charlie pulled back and hit her across the face, calm as you please. Will felt her lip cut against the sharp edge of her tooth, and, when the aftershock had died, wiped the blood there, glaring at Charlie with flint in her eyes.

"Women don't talk to me like that," said Charlie simply.

Will's hand shot out like lightning, striking Charlie's brow. He felt his head jerk back in an explosion of pain and recovered, reaching out to hit her again. She caught his wrist.

"Men don't hit me," she said, the blood welling on her lip and crawling down.

Charlie stared at her incredulously. "I'm not going to apologize."

"I don't expect you to." She picked up the bandages she'd dropped and continued with her methodical work, her hands moving fluidly.

For the life of him, Charlie couldn't think of a thing to say. Then, grudgingly, he said, "So where'd you learn to shoot like that?"

Will, just as cool, replied, "My brother. He's dead. Where'd you learn?"

"My father."

With this out, there was little left to say. After Will finished, she put the rest of the bandages back in the wagon and rolled out the mats beside the fire, curling up with her knees pulled to her chest. Charlie waited until her breathing found its rhythm before sitting up to look at her. Asleep, her brow was still creased as though she was deep in thought, her lips in a taut white line.

_Men don't hit me. _

What was he supposed to do with a statement like that? If he couldn't control her, he'd have to kill her, but he'd never been wounded and on his own.

He hadn't been on his own, period, for a long time. He'd always had the outfit surrounding him, the boss in front of him, something to do, someone to look to. Being alone out here under the gigantic sky made him feel like losing his mind might be just as easy as drinking or breathing or falling asleep. Maybe even precisely like that, like falling into a sleep from which there was no waking, rolling over and finding himself in an ocean of incoherent thoughts and women whose men did not hit them.

And how, for God's sake, did she still smell like roses, after how many days of sweating out her skin?

He could smell her over here, feet from her, could smell her from the wagon, where he'd lain unconscious. The smell filled his dream with flowered nectar like blood and the long green stem, the thorns and the rubbery leaves.

He rested his forehead on his knees and covered his ears, breathing in the musky scent of his clothes, the cigarette smoke from saloons passed through, the sweat, the fresh air that was rarely more than still in the oppressive heat of the day. He wanted to squeeze the tender necks of the roses, hunt them down to the last petal and destroy them.

Sleep came to him like an old friend, put its arms around his shoulders and eased him down, whispered something in his ear that could be anything but English. Charlie listened anyway, as he listened to everything around him, as words he'd never been intended to hear ate away at him.

What was it she'd said?

_I didn't mean it. Every cruel word I ever said to you was a lie._


	12. Chapter 11: Hellfire

**Chapter Eleven: Hellfire**

They were the worst dreams he'd ever had.

First, he was standing alone in the desert. The wagon and the girl had disappeared, as had his gun, his clothes, his shoes. All around him, sand stretched out like millions of lazy snakes lying belly flat and useless, snapping at the soles of his feet and reflecting the blazing sunlight into his eyes. The sky had caught fire. Up above him, it raged an inferno, spitting drops of flame down onto the ground, hissing, spattering like hot oil. From within it, a woman looked down at him, her face like a collection of all that had ever been, her hands reaching down to catch him in her grasp. He ran from her, but his feet grew heavy and the sand swallowed them. He tripped and fell into the rose garden.

The thorns cut at him. They tore into his flesh tiny words he couldn't read but knew to be the broken oaths of men as wicked as he. One rose caught sight of the hole in his shoulder and grew there, its stem in front of him, its bloom behind him, its petals dropping onto his back and burning.

He scrambled to his feet and stumbled through the harsh vines that curled around his legs and pulled him back. He broke them as he stepped forward, forward, and their thorns left red marks around his ankles like the leftovers of bindings. Above, the sky was beginning to burn itself out like all fires did, the edges growing blacker and colder. He felt himself begin to shiver as the sweat on his body froze, and then he felt the woman's hand on his back, hot and damp, and he turned to shove her away and saw fear in the mighty face. The fire burned out in her. Her eyes turned to ash and her open mouth leaned forward to swallow him.

Then it changed. He was standing waist-deep in the middle of a lake, his feet not touching the bottom but more water, and below him he could see strange creatures moving in the depths. Great fish with hair on their faces and human skin along their bodies rubbed against his bare legs and slithered onward, looking up at him with empty eye sockets, flicking their bone tails and moving jerkily like newborn babies. He tried to push himself out of the water, but the water was thick and soupy and pulled him down as he fought against it. When his head went under, he saw the bodies: the hundreds of men floating underneath the surface in funeral shrouds, their hands reaching up and finding more nothing.

Terrified, he swam blindly, swam faster than he could because he'd never learned to swim, swam with his legs kicking wildly and his arms propelling him forward, swam until he hit the bottom of the lake and fell through, fell from the sky and into the camp.

Green Eyes sat on a rolled up blanket and Ben Wade sat next to her, tending a fire even though it was broad daylight. When she saw him standing there, she stood up and threw her arms around his neck and pulled his face down to hers and kissed him so hard it almost went right through him. She pressed every curve of her body into every crevice of his, and the lake water that dripped from his skin soaked through her dress. One of her hands crept down his chest and between his legs, and he started shaking all over again. She bit his bottom lip and drew blood.

He pulled away, gasping, and she raked both her hands down the front of him, tearing away long strips of flesh deep enough that the blood that poured from the wounds poured rhythmically with his heartbeat. Her mouth was covered in it, her lip split as though from a harsh blow, the bridge of her nose crooked and swollen, her eyes blackened and half closed. Her dress wasn't wet from water, after all. There were three holes in her stomach, and liquid was pumping out of them and blooming across her torso, racing down her skirt, dripping into the dust.

He put his hands over the wounds, trying to stop the bleeding, but it trickled through his fingers and warmed his palms. Behind her, Ben Wade stood up, carrying the iron stick he was using to poke the fire. He stood behind her and drove the iron through her body, through Charlie's. She coughed, spraying his face with blood. He opened his mouth, trying to say something, unsure of what, before his vision tilted at a most peculiar angle and they were both in the dirt. Her skin went pale and her eyes turned grey from green.

Ben Wade stood over him and stepped on his neck, a gun in his hand now instead of the iron stick. He put the gun in Charlie's open mouth and pulled the trigger.

Charlie screamed, inhaled, and screamed again.

As soon as he did, he became aware of himself, aware of the cold on one side of his body and the flickering heat on the other, aware of the clothes on his body and the serrated pain in his shoulder. He heard himself screaming and closed his mouth to try to stop it, but all he managed to do was muffle the sound. He felt small, strong hands on him and opened his eyes.

There was blood everywhere. Will was kneeling over him, her dress soaked in red. He had her wrists in his hands.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

She shook her head quickly, as if to say she didn't know.

"You were yelling in your sleep," she said. "You tore off your bandages."

He released her and she fell back a little ways, making room for him to sit up. The pain was intense. He turned his head to the side and threw up into the dirt, his stomach heaving and his body shaking. The fire was still blazing. It made him sweat. It made him nauseous.

"Lie down," said Will, easing him onto his back. "Careful."

He did, avoiding the bile only a foot away, the smell of it turning his stomach. He had never shaken so hard in his entire life. It made his head rattle against the ground.

"Jesus, you've made a mess," she said, inspecting the wound. It had gone ragged from his clawing.

She poured water over the wound to further inspect the damage. Some strips of skin were hanging, others missing, and there were deep grooves where his fingernails had anxiously eaten at the open flesh. She tore him new bandages and removed his ruined shirt, making him sit up so she could rewrap the shoulder. He sat quietly, letting the soft sounds of fabric rolling calm his shaking.

"What were you dreaming about?" she asked him.

"Nothing," he said instinctively. She kept wrapping, tying fabric and pulling it over itself, patiently. He reconsidered, and described the dream for her, scene by scene, skipping over the part where she'd kissed him and he hadn't stopped her.

She listened to him impassively, concentrating on the job at hand, and when she was finished and he was still talking, she watched him try to explain himself as though he were a school child and she were his teacher. He refused to look at her, especially when he had to stumble over the transition from arriving at the camp to Ben Wade driving the iron through their bodies. He watched the burning embers at the bottom of the fire instead, the brightness stinging his eyes and giving him tunnel vision.

"You always talk in your sleep," she said when he was finished.

He looked at her, wanting to know what she'd heard.

"Most times I can't understand it," she said, shrugging. "Sometimes I can."

She stood up and went to the wagon to retrieve a meal cup from one of the crates, into which she poured water before holding it out to him. He tried to take it but pain shot through his arm, so she held it to his lips and tilted. He gulped at it eagerly, letting it douse the fire in his throat, and coughed as it crept down at strange angles.

"Slow," she said, "slow."

He wasn't sure how it happened. There was no moment of anticipation, no moment that he intended for it to happen; he was looking at her one moment and kissing her the next, and the cup fell from her hands and into the dirt with a dull, metallic sound, and her breath came in one quick gasp and she tried to push him away but he held fast, one arm around her waist, one hand tangled in her hair. She made a small, indignant noise that only egged him on.

When he released her, she glowered at him, her chin trembling with rage. He half expected her to hit him again, but instead, she grabbed him around the neck and kissed him, pressing her mouth into his just like she had in the dream, hard like a fall from a horse's back, knocking the wind out of him. He had to work to match her. It was hateful, that kiss. It made him feel like he'd swallowed hellfire.

She flayed him alive for nearly a full minute in a clutch of teeth and tongue, and then, just as suddenly as she'd started the thing, she disappeared into the darkness of the back of the wagon and did not return. He had half a mind to follow and have the rest of her, but he doubted he could so much as stand straight. So he shifted carefully and lay back on the bedroll, looking up at the stars and the moon that hung in the sky like a pregnant belly. His body hummed, not with ecstasy or satisfaction or even curiosity, but with an animal hunger that tunnelled under his skin and made him want to rip free of it. Never before had he so wanted to eat his gun.

He grasped at sleep but it wouldn't come to him. He lay awake in the gathering dawn.


	13. Chapter 12: Namesake

_What's this? A semi-timely update? Madness, I say!_

_Merry Christmas, to those of you who celebrate it. To the rest, safe and happy holidays._

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**Chapter Twelve: Namesake**

Will woke late, something that would be a luxury if not for the sweltering heat that accompanied the afternoon sun. She rolled over and hit her head on the crate that had her wedged against the wagon wall and opened her eyes in a brief moment of confusion to inspect her surroundings, the canvas that stretched over the top of the wagon, illuminated by sunlight and turning the air to golden honey. She sat up cautiously, her movements tiny to match the tiny space, her bones stiff and her muscles cramped after the long night in confinement.

Raising her arms above her head in a stretch, she caught a streak of red in her vision and quickly brought her hands before her eyes. There was dried blood on them, falling away in flakes. It had saturated the front of her dress so the fabric was stiff where dry. Some places were still wet.

He'd been screaming in his sleep.

He talked most nights, more now that he'd been injured than before. A majority of it was garbled, and a majority of that left her in ignorance; she woke to it briefly and fell back asleep unconcerned. Sometimes – rarely – she would keep her eyes open and watch him as he murmured to himself, and on these nights she was rewarded with names she'd never heard of and references she couldn't understand. Once or twice he'd startled himself into waking, but last night was something else entirely. She'd never seen so frenzied a look as the one in his eyes when first he opened them, and the way he'd grabbed her wrists, she could have been a runaway train he was trying to drag into the ground.

The gruesome nature of his dream unsettled her as he described it. She had tried to act as though she had heard its equivalent a million times before, and she thought she had been fairly convincing, as she could be when the situation called for it. Beneath the facade, however, she was disturbed by visions of women made of fire, vicious rose gardens, lakes where the dead swam in their funeral shrouds... not to mention the prophetic scene in which a rod of iron had been thrust through her body. The nights being as cold as they were way out here in the desert, it sometimes felt as though the blood were retracting from the edges of her limbs back into the center of her, as though it knew the places it would be needed most, the places it would most likely be spilled.

She shifted around carefully in the cramped space and peered over the top of the crate that had pressed down on the top of her head through the night. Beyond the end of the wagon, the ashes from the fire still smouldered slightly but the rest of the camp – the bedrolls, the utensils from last night's dinner – had disappeared. Charlie Prince was nowhere in sight.

She glanced over her shoulder at the bench and gave a little start when she saw him sitting there. He was staring straight ahead into the endless horizon of the desert, both sets of reigns gripped in his hands as though he were ready to drive. Will looked away from him as quickly as she could, trying to play as though she had known all along where he was sitting. She felt suddenly embarrassed, like a child with her hand caught in the cookie jar.

This man had tasted her mouth last night – it was a strange thing to have to admit, and the admitting itself made her feel as though she had disrobed in front of him too. For those few moments, no clothing had separated them, no air, no dividing line of dried skin, and he had known her in perhaps the most intimate way a person can be known. There was the other way, too, she supposed, but women did that for things as common as money. A kiss was something that was bestowed. Charlie Prince had gone inside her and taken it, and she had gone inside him and taken it right back. There was no avoiding it. It sat between them like a third horse, breathing softly and exuding heat.

She tried to lower herself back into a casual seated position without making noise, but as soon as she moved, Charlie turned around and caught her eye. The expression on his face was readable only enough to be intimidating, and she swallowed dryly. He inclined his head in a way that indicated she should come and sit next to him, so she got shakily to her feet, ducking her head to avoid the canvas ceiling, and climbed over the bench to sit down. He flicked the reigns once and the wagon lurched into motion. Once the horses' feet got into a steady rhythm, Charlie hung the reigns and pulled out his gun with a terrifying calm.

"What are you doing?" Will asked as he opened up the cylinder and shook the bullets into his palm. He put one back in and spun it shut.

"Motivating you." He cocked the gun and pointed it at her.

Will's breath hitched in her throat and her stomach swooped low. She opened her mouth but no sound came out.

"Your name," he said.

"W-what?" she stuttered. "Um – W-Will. Will."

He squeezed the trigger. Will jumped and the gun clicked hollowly.

"Who named you?" he asked. Calmly.

Will's chest shook as she breathed.

"My mother," she said. "My mother named me."

He pulled the trigger again.

"Why?"

"Um. Because." She sought out a lie, but none materialized, so she told the truth. "My name is Will because when I was born, it's what my mother called me. They put Wilhelmina on my birth certificate because it was my grandmother's name and they assumed that's what she meant. She died that day, so I never got to ask her; I only ever heard what my father told me when I asked."

She said it all impossibly fast, like she used to when she was still in school and they asked her questions whose answers she knew but didn't understand. She waited and he pulled the trigger again.

"You haven't asked me anything!"

"Yes I have. You never answered."

She racked her brains as he cocked the gun again. Of course.

"Mr. Hammond was the law in our town," she said. "When I was thirteen, my family held a Christmas dinner and he attended. My father and I had an argument that night and I went upstairs to my room. Hammond followed me and..."

Charlie didn't pull the trigger this time. "And?"

"He kissed me," said Will forcefully. "My first kiss. When I pushed him away, he acted as though I had somehow solicited... like I had been leading him on. I tried to make him understand, but he got angry. Violent. He... broke my nose. And my wrist, when I tried to run away from him and he caught me. No one could hear over the party. That night, my father came in to apologize for yelling at me and I told him what had happened. He and some of his friends ran Hammond out of town. I'd never seen him so furious... Hammond was lucky he didn't kill him."

She glanced at Charlie. The strange, indescribable expression had not left his face.

"And the other night," he said. "Who were you talking to?"

"Terry." She paused, realizing Charlie didn't know who Terry was. "My brother," she added.

Slowly, deliberately, Charlie turned the gun away from her face and toward the open desert. When he pulled the trigger, the bang like the crack of a whip reverberated in Will's ears. She flinched and squeezed her eyes shut for a few moments, until she could hear Charlie replacing the bullets he'd taken out.

"There," he said. "That wasn't so difficult."

Will stared at him until his gun was safely back in its holster, at which point she let herself relax.

"You look like hell," he said.

"Seems appropriate." She picked at the dried blood on her dress. "Do I get to ask you now?"

"I don't suppose I can stop you."

She paused for a moment, trying to decide if she really wanted to know the answer. Then: "How did you know about my father?"

"I don't understand," he said, but she could tell from the little nuances of his face that he did.

"The night after you got shot," she said, "you reminded me that if I didn't get home safe, my father would die. You don't know me from Eve. How would you know that my father is dying?"

Charlie shrugged. "I'm not the only person who talks in their sleep."

It occurred to her then that she had things in common with Charlie Prince. Aside from the obvious things like arms and legs and lungs, they could both ride a horse. They could both shoot a gun. She was sure that he knew as well as she did the places to hit a man in a fight. Contrary to her earlier statement about his father, he was the product of two people, had parents, maybe brothers and sisters. He hadn't always been the face on the wanted posters. He had fallen into step with Ben Wade somewhere, but before that he had been just another person. In the moment that he glanced over at her as he picked up the reigns, he was that person again. Briefly, probably not for more than thirty seconds, they were no longer outlaw and civilian, captor and prisoner, assailant and victim: they were two people whose paths had happened to cross in the wake of tragedy.

She attacked him then, leapt up with a roar and slammed into him so they both went flying off the wagon and into the dust. Unperturbed, the horses kept walking, the wagon moving steadily away from them as she landed one, two, three punches on his face, tearing open her knuckles on his teeth. Blood flowed from his mouth before he lifted his knee to her stomach. She felt the air leave her body as it buckled involuntarily and he flipped them so he was on top of her, pinning her down. His hands went to her throat and he squeezed. As he bore down on her, the blood from his lips dripped onto her face, a sickly painting. She clawed at his hands, trying to loosen his grip, but he held fast, letting go only when her vision blurred and her eyes began to roll. He slid off of her and she rolled onto her side, coughing into the dirt.

"What in pluperfect hell are you _doing?" _he demanded.

Will shivered and fell back, breathing hard.

"I killed those men," she said, "the men who shot you. They could have had families, wives and children. I knew that. I knew and I did it anyway."

"They tried to kill us."

"No, they tried to kill _you," _said Will forcefully. "They tried to arrest me. But for some reason, that was enough."

Charlie stood, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and looking at the wagon, which was moving steadily farther away as the horses continued to walk.

"Get up," he said. "Those horses won't stop."

He started walking, leaving her to pick herself up out of the sand and hurry after him, the heat of the ground swallowing up her bare feet and setting fire to them. She considered stopping, lying down, letting the desert envelop her and whoever should walk past next find her dead or alive.

She had thought that people like Charlie Prince could not possibly understand their nature, that no one would behave so immorally if they didn't think that their actions were justified. But as Charlie Prince walked away from her, walked as though no weight had ever fallen on his shoulders, she realized that there was such a thing as understanding an evil act without needing to forgive it.

When she thought of those men, lying with their heads split open and their blood turning to dust in their veins, it wasn't remorse she felt, but confusion. She had vowed to kill Ben Wade the day the sheriff had knocked on her door, her brother's blood still beneath his fingernails, for he had helped move the body.

In many ways, though, she was just like Ben Wade, and just like Charlie Prince. She had killed those men not without consideration of the consequences, but without sentimentality.

A tear slid down her cheek, and then another. _You're doing everything right, _Terry had told her, as though this had all been mapped out and she was only following directions. She wondered if this was what her mother had intended in naming her Will – if she had meant the will to survive even when the situation rendered death to be morally preferable. When a person found themselves on common ground with Charlie Prince, it became one such time.


	14. Chapter 13: Green

_Whoa-ho! An update! _

_I just checked my email for the first time in ages (I use a different email account for fanfiction than for personal stuff), and I had a lot of messages from one new and incredibly enthusiastic fan. (You know who you are.) I was deeply flattered by your praise and decided to write, in spite of the fact that I have absolutely no time for it anymore. _

_Still intend to finish this story. Hang in there._

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**Chapter Thirteen: Green**

That night, the sun tripped but, it seemed, did not fall completely. The wagon stopped when the air began to cool and Charlie got a fire going, split a can of beans with the girl even though he wasn't even approaching hungry. She picked at her own portion, and he was willing to bet she was feeling the same kind of sick he was, the sick of knowing that everything was about to come to a head, once they reached the dirty yellow spot that perched on the horizon. The light Nogales threw dulled the stars and drained the ink from the sky.

He saw her staring at the place where they both knew the city was, regardless of whether or not they could actually see it. There was no way for him to know what it meant for her – not unless he asked her, and he was already worried that his curiosity was getting the better of him. She confused and fascinated him in a way he could only attribute to the natural ways of women. They made it their business to torment men, to fill their dreams with visions of fire and roses and their stomachs with more lust than a body should be able to survive. Being alone with her for only a few days, he'd had to grapple with this insanity countless times, the desire was so strong. And the desire only awakened other things, things like anger and fear and hatred, things that had him wanting to wrap his hands around her throat just for existing, things that got both easier and harder to bear every time she spoke. Her words distracted him and soothed him in an elemental, instinctive way, and for that he only wanted to kill her more, because it only sharpened the edge of his agony.

"How many days now?" she asked.

"If we move fast, we'll be there by nightfall tomorrow."

"How fast can we move?"

"Fast enough."

He offered her the bean can and she waved her hand in refusal. He put it down next to the fire.

"What will you do after this?" she asked him.

He caught a chuckle in his throat, held it there.

"I'm not about to tell you," he said. "Made that mistake once already, and look where it's gotten me."

"I don't want to know where you're going. I just want to know what you'll do."

"What I've been doing, I imagine."

"Which is?"

"I thought you were intelligent," he grumbled.

"I know you're a thief," she said. "That doesn't tell me anything."

"What do you want to know?"

She looked up at him and an understanding passed between them.

Charlie Prince had seen forests before. Beyond the deserts of this barren state, the wombs of the world were fertile, lush with water and wood and green. At the outfit's cabin in the mountains of Colorado, trees exploded with wide leaves like open palms, collecting dew in the morning, whistling lonely songs at night. Charlie Prince had stood on the inside of windows that had never known curtains, watched the leaves burst out from claw-like branches, turning them soft, watched tiny flowers bloom alongside the delicate bushes. It was all so exhibitionistic, so bewildering. The first time he retreated there, he was used to hard sand with cracks so deep you could almost hear them. In Colorado, the world opened up to him, showed him water when he'd only known fire, showed him green when he'd only known red. Looking into her eyes, he felt like that all over again, like green was an alien language he couldn't understand, let alone speak. Her green spoke of forests where the air was sultry and fine, where tendrils reached out and lapped the sweat from the back of your neck and the bottoms of rivers were dense with moss so soft, even the rich couldn't afford it. An Eden for godless men.

He realized he didn't need to explain to her the knife's edge he walked. Tomorrow, they would arrive at Nogales and would part ways, probably never see each other again. She didn't know anyone who knew him, and he didn't know anyone who knew her. There would be no speaking of this, no way for it to haunt them.

"I want to know what you do, when you're not robbing wagons and terrorizing bars," she said.

He shook his head, prodded at the fire with a long, thin stick.

"I've never been the artistic type," he said. "Never been the talkative type either. The truth is, between aiming, shooting and killing, this life is the only one I've ever been good at. When I'm not robbing wagons and terrorizing bars, I'm waiting to. I'm the one on the wanted posters. I'm exactly who anyone would tell you I am."

"No you're not," said Will. "That man would have killed me."

"Maybe I still have plans to."

She smiled. "Maybe you already have."

"No." He tossed the stick aside. "I didn't kill you... I don't know. I've never killed a woman before. I've never been the one driving a wagon to a rendezvous either. Killing you... it felt like bad luck waiting to happen. That was stupid, though. It was worse luck, keeping you alive. Hammond on top of everything else."

"He would have recognized you whether I had been there or not."

"I could have paid him off, if you hadn't been there."

"You could have left me."

"No, I couldn't." He paused, added: "You would have told him everything. Nogales, the rendezvous. There would have been law all around that place by the time I got there."

He thought for a moment.

"You didn't have to shoot those officers," he said.

"I've said that before."

"Why did you?"

"It felt like the right thing. Maybe if I had thought about it first, I would have done something different."

"You ever killed a man before that?"

She picked up a handful of dust, tossed it into the fire. It crackled and sparks flew off the tiny rocks.

"No," she said, "never. Deer. A wolf once, after a herd of cattle. Killing a man wasn't as different as I thought it'd be." She considered, said "I'm not sorry."

From the inside pocket of his jacket, Charlie pulled out a small silver flask that caught the light of the fire and threw it over to Will like a wink. He unscrewed the cap and drank cautiously, minding the fragility of his shoulder as the joint turned. Will hesitated when he offered it to her. She made a point of not drinking.

Then again, there was something so pivotal about this moment, this decision that hung between them as he held the flask out to her. She took the flask from him, poured the sharp, stinging liquid down the back of her throat, bit the burn like catching a bullet in her teeth, and from that moment on, she didn't look back.


End file.
